Have you ever sat down to book a flight out of DTW or MBS, looked at a connection option, and immediately thought, "Absolutely not, I'm not transferring there"?
If you’ve ever paid an extra $50 just to avoid sprint-racing through a specific concourse or getting stuck in layover purgatory, you are far from alone. We’ve all got our personal airport hit list, and as it turns out, science and data back up our paranoia.
The aviation site AeroCorner recently set out to rank the worst airports in America. By pairing official on-time departure data from the Bureau of Transportation with customer satisfaction feedback from J.D. Power, they put together a list of the country’s most head-ache-inducing hubs.
Check out the top 10 worst airports in America below—and see how many times you've been burned by number one.
The 10 Worst Airports in America
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Chicago O'Hare (ORD)
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Newark Liberty (EWR)
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Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (FLL)
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Philadelphia International (PHL)
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Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW)
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Chicago Midway (MDW)
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Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA)
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Nashville International (BNA)
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Baltimore/Washington (BWI)
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Cleveland Hopkins (CLE)
The View from the Great Lakes State
If you live and fly in Michigan, this list probably triggers a little bit of travel PTSD.
For starters, Chicago O’Hare taking the #1 spot surprises absolutely no one who has ever flown out of Michigan. Connecting through O'Hare in the winter is basically a game of Russian roulette with the weather gods. If a single snowflake lands on Lake Michigan, your 45-minute layover suddenly morphs into a six-hour delay in Terminal 1 while you eat an overpriced sandwich.
And let’s not ignore Midway sitting right at #6. Between O'Hare and Midway, Chicago essentially has a monopoly on ruined travel plans for Midwesterners.
Then there’s Cleveland Hopkins at #10, sitting just across Lake Erie to remind us that driving might have been the better option all along.
We might complain about construction on I-75 or the line at the TSA checkpoint on a Sunday night, but taking a look at this list makes you appreciate Detroit Metro (DTW) just a little bit more. At least when you're sprint-walking at DTW, you get to ride the red tram or walk through the colorful tunnel.
So, if your next flight goes smoothly without a surprise detour through O'Hare or Newark, consider yourself lucky. What’s the one airport on this list you will pay extra to completely avoid?
