The worst airport in the world

On an epic but failed odyssey final week, I had a revelation. Sprinting for 40 minutes on disembarkation, via arrivals, alongside travelators, by way of an enormous automobile park, to a bus, on a freeway to a different terminal and a brand new set of exits, on an additional connecting practice, via the duty-free store and down an interminable hall to find that I had, sadly, and by two minutes, missed my subsequent connection, I got here to this conclusion. Madrid-Barajas is the Worst Airport within the World.

It wasn’t the truth that the separate terminals are about as handily situated as planets in a photo voltaic system, in order that with a view to get from one to a different in a well timed trend it’s worthwhile to break the pace of sunshine. Nor that the social engineers who designed its mighty structure conceived a winding pathway to make sure passengers are steered via each tiny dispensary and retail alternative with a view to direct you even additional out of your flight.

No, it was the dearth of signage that fully mystified me. Not even in Spanish. There have been no clues in sight. Travellers are presumably anticipated to intuit that Terminal “4S” is an appendage of Terminal 4 accessed by way of a secret practice that may be situated solely via using Spidey sense.

Flailing round, yelping at varied folks sporting tabards, I felt like Anneka Rice in Treasure Hunt, the traditional tv recreation present by which she traversed the nation utilizing cryptic clues and native information to seek out the profitable spoils. At one level, simply as within the TV present, I used to be joined by an enthusiastic employees member who jogged alongside me to show a sooner route. Or a minimum of that’s what he instructed me as we raced into an empty concrete automobile park by which I couldn’t see one other soul. No matter . . . he wore a lanyard and appeared to have an insider’s information of the plot.

Everybody has their peeves with regards to airports. British airports frustrate with their insistence that we use their prissy little plastic baggies to stack our toiletries, like some recreation of cosmetological Tetris the place we should select between deodorant or sustaining some semblance of follicular management. Anxious flyers take concern with airports with quick runways — equivalent to Courchevel — or perilous, equivalent to Vágar within the Faroe Islands (which has the joys of sitting on a cliff edge and being buffeted by excessive winds and heavy fog). Personally, I’d gladly trade the danger of hazard when contemplating my choices than need to cross via these US hangars the place all the pieces is staffed by a pc and the meals appears just like the undigested remnants one discovers in a corpse.

Industrial airports give the misinform the concept that there stays any glamour in trendy journey. For most individuals, it’s only a sweaty, smelly schlep. (Really, personal airports aren’t a lot better — they’re simply business airports with large white leather-based sofas and a greater class of nut.) And but the extra disagreeable the journey is turning into, the extra we attempt to get away.

This week, Ryanair reported its most worthwhile December quarter on document, pulling in some €211mn, and reiterated a revenue forecast of between €1.325bn and €1.425bn on this monetary 12 months. The airline has rebounded from the pandemic, filling 93 per cent of seats. In response to its chief govt Michael O’Leary, the price of residing disaster has solely made folks extra decided to ebook that vacation. So decided, presumably, that passengers will waive the very fact the airline is so grossly craven in its profit-hunting that they routinely cost a charge to decide on a seat, along with the ticket we would foolishly assume can be ample to permit us to get on the aircraft. But Ryanair is simply partly liable for the tradition of screwing passengers. From the bloated lounges and limitless queueing to the lacking baggage (the lacking baggage!) and the expensive extras, nearly each single characteristic of the aeronautical expertise is now a large bore.

So why fly, say those that, conscious of the melting ice-caps, want to achieve their locations by unicycle or different worthy, much less carbon-burning means? Right here once more, the expertise is fairly dreadful: even Eurostar, as soon as a portal to whole chicness, has been diminished to a shabby simulacrum of its as soon as fabulously pretty self. The enforcement of recent border controls following Brexit has turned departures right into a cattle station by which passengers are corralled in big, amorphous queues. The trains, in the meantime, are packed to full capability as a result of they’ve needed to scrap a load of providers to permit the officers time to stamp the paperwork.

On the flip aspect, crappy journey expectations do make it all of the extra thrilling when lastly you attain someplace by which all the pieces simply works. Having simply been to Antwerp for a piece journey, I’m contemplating revisiting for a vacation based mostly on the convenience of journey and calm by which all of us arrived. And any likelihood to go to Copenhagen is one I’ll gladly seize. The airport is preposterously gigantic, but it surely’s jammed with obscenely engaging Scandinavians, serves tasty pastries at metre intervals and has an array of stores by which to dawdle whilst you wait out your delays. Most vital, and magical of all, it boasts signage you possibly can spot from Mars.

E mail Jo at jo.ellison@ft.com

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