New York’s JFK vs. Frankfurt Airport
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 08.17.07 | 8:29 AM ET
Thomas Swick recently flew home from Europe, passing through Frankfurt airport and New York City’s John F. Kennedy International. According to Swick, they couldn’t have been more different. In Frankfurt’s airport, he encountered an inviting rustic tavern, walked among large windows looking out onto sun-lit planes and watched an international crowd of travelers passing Hermes, Boss and Swarovski and chatting in the Goethe Bar, near a statue of the writer. And it was only 7 a.m. “I had never seen such a wide-awake airport at such an early hour,” he writes. “It felt as if the world had left home.” And what of JFK, where Swick landed nine hours later?
“I walked on soiled carpets under a water-stained ceiling past rows of torn seats showing yellow foam padding,” he writes. “This was the anti-gemutlichkeit: bad lighting, bad paperbacks, bad music (Everyday People), bad food.”
Suffice to say, it was not the homecoming Swick would have hoped for.
“It was,” he writes, “disheartening…to come from what a former Defense Secretary not long ago called ‘Old Europe’ and find everything—in the so-called ‘greatest city in the world,’ in the superpowerful United States—tired and sad and dilapidated.”
Swick’s column is yet more bad press for JFK.
Related on World Hum:
* What Happens at JFK Doesn’t Stay at JFK
* JetBlue Apologizes for Stranding Passengers on Planes at JFK
* Adventures in ‘Airworld’
Photo by scarymonkeyshow via Flickr, (Creative Commons)
Email to friend
Twitter
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! Buzz
Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
toothpilot 08.19.07 | 12:40 PM ET
Our last experience at JFK was as described in the article. It was so bad that to this day we will not travel into or out of this airport, and have refused travel arrnagements through cruise lines and other tour operators if they can not provide an alternative! Sorry, NYC, but you really need to do something about JFK! BTW Charles DeGaulle in Paris has recently tied JFK as worst experience for us!
Jen 09.23.07 | 2:55 PM ET
I have to agree about the Frankfurt airport, I felt like I was in a different dimension when I was there at 9am. The time seemed to mean nothing, as everyone was eating bratwurst and drinking beer. Frankfurt’s airport, is by far my favourite.