This screed, brought to you via Fark, takes a few swift kicks at Dulles Airport here in Northern Virginia:
On the plus side, Eero Saarinen’s elegant design, even if now extended, still soars over the flat Virginia countryside, sometimes seeming all the more beautiful because for years it has been an oasis in a desert of construction. But that is the sum of the plus side, period. Whether leaving or arriving, Dulles is without other redeeming virtues.
Two recent personal trips, and anecdotal evidence beyond number, show an airport in chaos – think Calcutta, Nairobi or any other erstwhile Third World hell hole, where to get on or off a flight was often an achievement in itself, and you have Dulles. This is not exactly appropriate for the world’s only superpower.
What a load of unmitigated crap. Dulles, undergoing construction, is more confusing than it used to be, but is still a marvel of simplicity. The terminals are short enough that walking them is not daunting; they’re unobstructed and it’s easy to find your gate. Everything from the main terminal building to the gates is open and it’s easy to see where you need to be.
The security situation, however, is pretty dismal. The small security screening area, a hold over from days when security was not as heavy, is too small; the line can extend the length of the newly enlarged main terminal.
In the end, this article is another example of hypocrisy. Has this author never taken a close look at London Heathrow airport?
I never, ever, ever want to fly into that airport ever again. It is completely impossible to find one’s way through that crushing, claustrophobic maze of little rooms and tilting corridors, where gates are little rooms and one boards several buses to get to planes; where signage — where it actually exists — is wrong or unhelpful; an airport that, while closer to downtown than Dulles, takes twice as long to travel to; where every available space is plastered with ads. The entire airport is jury-rigged and services are jammed in to any free corner of the almost Escher-like structure — I still have no idea what the exterior of the airport must look like, because there was no evidence of a design, and in fact, damn few windows.
Pot calling the kettle black, indeed.
