Ah, What's the worst airport stopover you've had?

ProudDUB wrote: »

we were traveling under particularly harrowing personal circumstances, that I won't bore ya'll with.

I know it's 10 years later, but hope everyone is OK now.

ProudDUB wrote: »

Btw, dunno what the beef is with Hotlanta airport. I must have traveled thru it 200 times when I lived there & I don't think I had one bad experience with the security staff. They may not be as polished as those in some other cities, but they deffo have the human touch that those in JFK, O'Hare etc etc sorely lack imo.

I spent 18 hours "trapped" in Madrid airport, airside, and that was still better than my experience of Atlanta! Usually if I know I'm going to be somewhere more than 6 hours (long layover) I book a hotel. The layover in Madrid was only supposed to be a few hours, so didn't bother. Think there was a problem with the plane or something, which led to the delay. All along we were being told another hour, another 30 minutes.

People finally starting demanding vouchers for food/drink, but by the time they organised them, all the airside shops/restaurants were closed so there was nowhere to get anything. I wasn't too bad - I'd used my own money (shock!) to buy stuff before things closed, and ended up donating bottles of water to a family with kids. I still think the parents were bordering on neglect. Sure, the airline "owed" us, but I think if I had kids with me I'd have forked out for some water at least.

The most irritating thing was not being allowed to leave. Once it hit a certain time it was completely obvious that even if a new plane arrived, it wasn't going to be taking off again until at least 6am, so I could have fecked off and got a bed somewhere.

And despite all that, Atlanta was worse

Madrid airport for 12 hours, 10pm till 10am next morning.

Everything closed, this was pre smart phone days also. I'm a light sleeper so can't really sleep in airports but my mate could sleep no bother. I just raced around on trolleys and had loads of hot chocolate from the vending machine.

Not so much a stop over but I arrived at Dublin airport to get a flight to Cyprus. The screens came up as delayed and the boarding time kept getting put back and back. Sitting around in departures for about 3 hours before we're told the flight has been cancelled. Turned out an airport vehicle collided with the plane somehow so they couldn't fly it for safety reasons. We were told to come back in 24 hours and hope for the best pretty much. Some were put up in the airport hotel but we just drove home. Came back the following night and they stuck us on some unmarked aircraft that was flown in from Paris.
Seriously how do you crash into a stationary plane!!!

I've been fairly lucky on stopovers down the years.

Only entertaining one was last year, we had a 7 hour stopover in Toronto before our connecting flight to Winnipeg. We decided to leave Pearson and go into Toronto for food. My 4 year old, who'd been great on the flight over, fell asleep in the back of the cab but woke with a start and vomited everywhere. We mopped up what we could but the back of the taxi was a bit of a state. We got to the mall and the cab driver just turned around, took our fare and said nothing. We got out and ran into GAP to get a change of clothes for the little one. Was half expecting to be hunted down by the cabbie.

Was meant to fly to Singapore with herself and our 3 year old daughter last year. Just as we are getting into the car to drive to the airport the missus discovers her passport is out of date, cue hysteria and panic. We decide the best plan was to change her flight for the following day (cost 500 euro) and for me to fly solo with our 3 year old as it was too expensive to change all 3... I didnt hold out much hope that she would make the flight the next day but it was all we could do. Arrived in Abu Dhabi airport and the terminal was unbearably warm and both myself and my daughter are extremely tired and emotional having not slept on the flight at all. Stopover was meant to be 3 hours, flight delayed another 3 hours so thats 6 hours in total. Abu Dhabi was absolutely rammed full (ive never seen it like that before) and there was literally no where to sit down. My phone wasnt working and I couldnt find any working WIFI \ internet kiosks or payphones in the terminal we were in so had no idea if herself managed to get a passport and make the next flight.

My daughter has really blonde hair and blue eyes which is a bit of a novelty in Abu Dhabi so literally spent 6 hours sitting on the ground with random strangers coming up and rubbing her hair and giving her melted chocolate bars and warm jellies \ sweets, which was charming at first but got annoying really quickly as my daughter hadnt eaten a thing on the flight and I was trying to get some proper food in to her and she just wanted to eat the junk. My tablet and laptop had died so literally just sat on the floor with a crying 3 year old in my arms for 6 hours straight staring at the floor thinking FML, After what felt like an eternity we were shuffled onto a packed bus which sat on the tarmac for another 40 minutes in the searing heat with no seats before we were eventually allowed to board.

When we landed, we had been travelling for nearly 30 hours straight, One of my best mates met me at the gate at 3am local time with a hug and 3 bottles of ice cold Tigers and informed me that herself managed to make the flight.. I could have kissed him..but I was too tired

Mint Sauce wrote: »

Expected much more in Salzberg in Austria or Lyon in France, could get nothing once past Security, or if I could it was stupidly over priced.

I had occasion to spend 4 hours in Salzburg airport recently and was lucky not to have been able to print my boarding pass in advance. There's a decent enough restaurant upstairs before you go through security but very little worthy of attention after the security (at least in Terminal 2 - a barely glorified barn).

London Stansted - flew from Dub with the last flight of the day, had a another flight at 10 am in the morning. Friends thought it would be a great idea to tell me how they got their belongings stolen there while asleep so I ended up trying to come up with a whole system that would wake me up while someone tries to open/steal my backpack/handbag. It involved me leaving my backpack on and having it against the wall. My handbag was tied to my arm in case someone tries to steal it. In case they just wanna dive in to get my wallet or so I simply (sic!) removed my shoelace and tied it around the handbag. I also removed pads from my bra (there is a tiny pocket for that in there, yeah ) and used it as a safe place to store the most important bits - my phone in one cup and my passport in another one.

Now that I read this... sweet jesus I bet I am online somewhere given the preparation and coming up with the solution for that paranoia took me about an hour

Ah and no, I don't do that anymore! It was my first stopover ever... :P

Charles De Gaulle airport with an 8 month old. We were on our way home from Johannesburg, so had already been on a 12 hour flight and had a 5/6 hour wait. They refused to give us our pram for the transit time because "this is France and we don't do that" even though they gave it to us on the way out. They have these "courtesy buggies" that are rock hard and the poor baby has to sit completely upright. We had to transfer terminals before we had access to these so we were struggling lugging him and our hand luggage around.

It was the early hours of the morning and he was desperate to sleep but was too uncomfortable so he was an absolute crank monster. Added in that there was nowhere for us all to sit and the few shops that were there were closed and we were all desperate for breakfast. Plus the staff were so rude.

Just an awful experience all round. We just walked around like zombies for a few hours. I'm not surprised to see CDG mentioned a few times in this thread. We'll never fly through there again, especially as we had a bad experience on the actual plane with Air France too.

Spent a night in bratislava airport which was rough enough. But the worst was sitting in the plane on the runway in Miami waiting to take off for over an hour. The heat was intense.