Sarcasm is the key here.

The point being that there is no worse airport than CDG....and I thought I was slow

Seems to change all the time...There was a time where Frankfurt's was quite nice/modern etc. but now, one of my least favorite...Then again, Schiphol (AMS) used to be pretty bland but now has been renovated/updated

It's personal taste too I guess...Heathrow can be a pain to transit through but the advantages of a well equipped & modern terminal like #5 has merit for me

Typically, though, I just fly straight from across the pond into Suisse

Try Jan Smuts c.1990 Anal Security was an understatment

Transferring through Barcelona on the way to La Palma was a bit of a nightmare, you could see where you needed to go via all the glass walls, but it was another thing trying to actually get there.

Luton is awful. Got shouted at for taking one bag out of another bag (which would have later been put back into the same bag).

OMG! D'you think... That must be where I was going wrong...

My wife would disagree (re the amount I fly). Check again, being parked out on the remote was not my point. We weren't parked on the remote - we were on a stand.

The connection though, was remote - we practically drove halfway to our destination before we got to the plane... We then had to go past the plane, to do a three point turn as the bus only had doors on one side and despite the fact that the apron was completely clear of any other planes (though I guess that might be a safety thing, i.e. bus has to stay out of aeroplane zones...).

Heathrow has a lot is over-use issues, but at least there's something to do...

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Every person I know who has gone through CDG has had problems, sometimes the least of which was baggage lost (even though that happened to every single one).

I haven't done more than a 1 hour flight on Swiss in years. Can't stand not having a pocketknife on me. Until I make it back stateside for a visit I'll stick to cars and trains.

The new Terminal 5 at Heathrow is wonderful.

But Terminals 1,3,4 are dreadful. The now defunk terminal 2 was abhorrent.

I just passed once via Amsterdam. The only bad thing i have to say (ive been really lucky so far i guess) is that during the going from the terminal to the plane, i counted 5 suitcases laying on the tarmac. Im glad i only had hand luggage that day

CDG is in a league of its own....

http://www.dirjournal.com/info/world...orst-airports/

i used to land at CDG Paris as transit station from dubai to Zurich ,

i didnt even continue my trip to zurich and i came back to Dubai and then took again direct fly .i still remember how bad the airport there and the poeple , all the infos they will give you is wrong , no help , they dont care even about anything .....

Conclusion : going to CDG Paris it is like going to the Hell

In my experience the French will avoid using the official name and call it Roissy. The same goes for Avenue Charles de Gaulle; they use the old name. And l'Arc de Triomphe is known as Étoile (star).

I used to do the trip between Roissy and Manchester on a regular basis, and found it not too bad if I hit the early evening flights. That route was shared by British Airways and Air France. I used to fly Air France when possible, since the food and drink were better / more generous.

If I remember correctly, Air France took off from the other terminal which was much easier to navigate. My top tip for waiting there was to order a gin tonic and give the waiter a healthy tip. The next one would contain a much more generous slug of gin.

Heathrow and Gatwick have been the worst experiences for me, and I've been in some pretty dire third world airports.

I have to agree with Sandgrounder on the wannabe policemen aspect in the UK.

Copenhagen is the worst by far. Used to be a really nice airport untill they decided to make it into a Turkish bazar. I dont want to be there the first time they have a fire incident, thats for sure.

I've seen quite a few airports in my time and would agree that CDG is one of the worse, particularly if you're delayed. Frankfurt is up there for being pretty rotten as is most of Heathrow for me. That said, I think that the new T5 is brilliant, a really nice place to go through. I avoid Gatwick like the plague - check in is always a nightmare and security control is close to militant. Went through Washington Dulles the other week and it was a nightmare.

Two of the nicest airports I have been to in the last three months were the new ones in Bangkok and Beijing.

Don't know about the other two, but l'Arc de Triomphe is the triumphal arch, while l'Etoile is the road/roundabout that surrounds it. Both legitimate names rather than mutually exclusive.

Only five, huh? Must have been a very quiet day at AMS!

Apart from the - rightly infamous - Black Luggage Hole of Amsterdam, it's a pretty good airport, but would give a heads-up on two topics:

• If you have to cross from the Schengen side to the non-Schengen sides of the airport (or vice versa), do it as soon as possible, and do not leave it til later. The facilities are virtually identical on both sides, but the queues to go betweencan get massive and very slow, whilst the staff totally fail to manage the situation of people with short connections at the end of a hour-long queue in any way whatsoever.

• Expect zero help from KLM customer services if your flight has been delayed or cancelled, especially if it's Friday evening. As I found out the hard way, all the customer services staff f@ck off home in the afternoon on a Friday, cos they don't want the hassle of sorting people out with accommodation etc on a Friday evening

[PEDANTRY]
Actually, l'Arc de Triomphe d l'Etoile, to give it its full name, stands at the centre of Place Charles De Gaulle (formerly known as Place de l'Etoile).
[/PEDANTRY]

And as they come to the final straight, weejeem makes a late burst to become geek of the week.

Thanks weejem. That's the missing link. What I should have said was that although all the maps showed Place CDG, everyone called it Étoile.

And now I feel old... this was nearly 30 years ago

I went through AMS many times, but my luggage never got lost there. It still keeps getting lost with a probability of about 65%, but the Black Hole usually is in Detroit, except when Detroit once sent me to CDG instead of AMS on the way back to ZRH (because of faulty cabin air conditioning). At CDG I was told that I still had to fly to AMS to eventually get to Zurich (!). And that time it was CDG that lost my suitcase, not AMS.

I had some not so pleasant experience with Newark, NJ, LaGuardia, and Chicago ORD too, while I found Washington Dulles and JFK, albeit somewhat awkward, still far better than Newark. But that's not Europe, hence OT. Heathrow: Was there only once, so not entitled to vote.

DB, needless to say that the old Helliniko Airport in Athens was pretty crazy, especially the domestic side, but I don't know if I'd call the new one lovely. A few months after opening, the baggage claim conveyor belts squeaked already so badly, you couldn't stay there for more than a few minutes, and the bus station / curb area already looked as run down as the platforms at NYC Grand Central Terminal, in other words, 100 y.o..

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