Ask the pilot

Our ongoing conversation about airports, now in its fifth week, seems to invite a contest in the vein of my best/worst airline pageant of a few months ago. Indeed, readers have been urging me to hold a similar competition. For now I'm hesitant. The airline poll, fun as it was, ran with a disclaimer: Lasting opinions, good and bad, are often hard-forged through single encounters, and with any open solicitation of opinions, votes tend to be cast from the extremes -- by those most inordinately pleased or vindictively pissed off.

A summary of favorite airports would be hostage to the vagaries of when and how, exactly, a given traveler experiences a property. For example, at John F. Kennedy International (D-Mass.) on a pleasant morning, crowds are sparse and one is drawn to the history and grandness of the place. Pay a visit to the Calder sculpture or Saarinen's masterwork Terminal 5; maybe spy a pelican gliding along the perimeter of Jamaica Bay. On the other hand, few places are more stressful than JFK on a hot summer night during the transatlantic departure push, thunderstorms forcing three-hour delays while the check-in queues at Air India snake into the parking lot.

That being said, when the industry periodicals and travel sites grade airports, the results are often as predictable as their airline polls. Just as Singapore Airlines is perennially hailed as one of the world's most esteemed carriers, so does its hometown field, Changi, score among the very best airports. At Changi flyers find, among other soothing distractions, koi ponds, gardens and a swimming pool. To avoid gateside congestion, Changi's overseers even make a point of including enough chairs at each departure portal to evenly match the capacity of the largest planes. Elsewhere, Frankfurt and Amsterdam are customary high scorers, with Miami, Newark and JFK regular pariahs.

Skytrax, which deems itself "the global barometer of airline passenger opinions" (and you thought it was Salon.com), announced its airport winners for 2004. The top five:

1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore (Changi)
3. Amsterdam (Schiphol)
4. Seoul (Incheon)
5. Kuala Lumpur

One advantage held by many European and Asian players extends beyond the airport itself to include access to and from. Those who've had the (mis)fortune of contrasting, say, the rail link at Amsterdam-Schiphol with the perpetual traffic snarl surrounding Miami International will never underestimate the effects of public transport when catching a flight. When was the last time anybody drove from the middle of a large European city to the airport? Granted it happens (in Brussels, for one), but for a few euros you can step aboard a clean, quiet train at Amsterdam's Centraal Station or Frankfurt's Hauptbahnhof and be deposited on the in-terminal platform within minutes. Same at Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and other cities.

To me, more sensible than a showdown between airports, strictly speaking, might be one between terminals. This is especially relevant in the United States, where many larger airports operate as a cluster of independent units. One traveler's hell on earth (Boston-Logan, terminal D) is a short walk from another's pleasant surprise (Boston-Logan, terminal E). Kennedy is the most distinctive example, where each of nine buildings is, in a sense, a separate airport, showcasing its own architectural theme and personality. Or lack thereof. In America we tend to upgrade our airports piecemeal. Terminals are renovated and expanded one concourse at a time, like additions to an old house. For better or worse, rare in this country is the kind of central hall, common in Europe and Asia, where check-in desks and facilities for all airlines are consolidated within a single, occasionally magnificent atrium.

Also rare in America, excepting the most recent case of Denver, is the truly new, from-the-ground-up airport. Compare to Asia, where in the past decade at least four major international hubs -- Osaka-Kansai, Seoul-Incheon, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur were erected from scratch, in some cases requiring construction of the immense offshore islands on which they sit. (Here in Boston we've watched the Big Dig unfold, but Massport can't get a 5,000-foot runway approved after two decades of squabbling.)

Two more superprojects are presently underway in Asia. Outside Nagoya, Japan, the Central Japan International Airport is slated to open in early 2005, while in Guangzhou, China (the former Canton), Baiyun International was to begin accepting flights this month. While both are set amid huge population bases (20 million around Nagoya), the builders are also thinking freight: The Nagoya area is home to several of Japan's largest manufacturers, yet the nearest serious cargo hub is Tokyo-Narita, more than 200 miles to the northeast. Guangzhou, China's third-biggest city and a center of exports, sits less than a hundred miles from Hong Kong. The airports at Narita and Hong Kong are, for now, the world's second- and fourth-largest freight handlers, respectively.

To finish this off: My hesitancy to conduct an airport poll is, maybe, a shy way of baiting you. And now that I've brought it up -- who am I kidding? -- stopping your letters will be impossible. So go ahead. We'll keep it loose, and rather than an outright scoresheet I'll run a sampling of your more loved and loathed aerodromes around the globe.

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