Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Airport Madness
Monday
March 15, 2004
"Are we in Kansas?"
-Girl in line in front of me at the Kansas City, Missouri airport
It's 2:57 AM EST as I write this, back once again in Tampa. But only just approaching midnight on the west coast, which is why I'm awake at this hour. Jet lag is a bitch.
My trip to San Francisco/Oakland was a wonderful experience and a very fun time. I have so many great stories to tell, which will be coming on here later this week.
But I'm writing now to bitch about the Kansas City airport. Never, ever, ever again (pronounced agaaaaain) will I connect through there unless I absolutely have to. It's without question the worst setup I've ever seen for an airport at any I've ever visited.
Here's my beef: at least at the Southwest Airlines terminal, they have a ridiculously small amount of space between the exit to the outside world and the boarding area for the planes. I needed to connect to another Southwest plane to get to Tampa (since Southwest doesn't have any direct flights between Oakland and Tampa, dammit), but to do that I had to physically leave the secure area and be re-checked. Why? Because they had the gates separated by rows of five. I came in through Gate 36, which was in the 36-40 area. My flight to Tampa left from Gate 42, so I had to leave the secure area and then get in line to get to the other side. In a related note, there was a ridiculously long line of people waiting to be screened, many of whom were under similar circumstances with the connecting flight thing.
But here's the rub: even if I had been lucky enough to be in the same gate area for my Tampa flight, I still would've needed to leave the secure area to be able to get anything to eat or drink, since the restaurant choices (which were limited to begin with) were entirely located outside of the terminal area.
Further complicating me was that I was using an antiquated paper ticket freebie, which required me going to the gate to check in. So I had to grab a chicken Philly sandwich at the Great American Steak & Potato Company (which, humorously, was "out" of potatoes for the evening) and then eat it in the security line while waiting to reach the gate for my Tampa flight. Lovely.
The cherry on top for me was that the woman for Southwest who got me checked in for my "C" group boarding pass (since it took so damn long for me to get back there) asked if I'd be willing to miss this flight, get a free room and free dinner in Kansas City, and fly back the next day (today) at 3 PM. Since I have to be at work in the morning, I declined. This is common in airplane travel, so no biggie. But then once on the plane, there was an open seat in the trio of seats in front of me. Good grief... I'm sure Kansas City is a wonderful place (my former WEHT co-worker Eric Burke tells me that he likes it there), but that airport setup is ass-backward. Compared with a comparably sized city like Pittsburgh, which has a great airport, KC's setup seems to be designed to be as user un-friendly as possible. If you're flying Southwest, and see "MCI" (the airport code for Kansas City) pop up as a connecting city, pick another choice if at all possible...
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