Charlotte Airport Brags Its Low Costs While Passengers Pay With Crowds, Long Walks, And Missed Connections

Charlotte airport is a pit, and for me it’s where connections go to die. The airport wasn’t built for the volume of traffic it gets. The corridors are packed body to body with passengers. The American Airlines clubs aren’t much better.

The airport has some of the longest walks outside of Miami. Arrive on a regional jet on the E concourse and you can easily be looking at 15 minute walks to a connection, or longer when people movers are broken as they seemingly often are.

And they’re proud of it! They are touting being ‘the most financially-efficient’ airport, year after year.

The airline sells 35 minute connections for those flights, too. It’s technically possible to make it from one flight to another even coming from a regional jet at E, where you first need to wait for your carry on bags to be delivered planeside. If you hoof it over you may arrive at your connection before doors close. But not always. It really depends on what runway you land on, and whether your plane gets caught in an alleyway.

When it doesn’t involve those regional jets on the E concourse you’ll find 30 minute connections. If your inbound flight has a short delay, your connection goes away. American Airlines operates about 90% of flights at the airport – and 70% of their passengers are connecting.

There are two American Airlines Admirals Clubs and both are miserable. The main one is still in the old US Airways style. They shut it down for half a year for renovations and didn’t actually bother to renovate (largely just doing fire work). It’s undersized and overrun. And the secondary lounge is too small and in the 2017-era ‘modern hospital’ style.

What’s attractive about Charlotte isn’t that it’s a good airport, it remains in American Airlines good graces by being low cost. Put another way, it’s undersized, poorly-designed, and has gone decades without enough investment to upgrade the experience. And they’re proud of this.

The airport brings out the worst in passengers like this restroom brawl, they probably shouldn’t have gotten rid of the bathroom attendants you were expected to tip because at least those could call for help in situations like this. Tipping, of course, is a way for employers to pay lower wages – which is the most on-brand thing ever for the Charlotte airport.

Things will get a bit better in the future with a Capital One lounge, an Amex Sidecar to join the Centurion lounge, an American Airlines business class Flagship lounge and new Admirals Club to replace the current main one along with the secondary club, Provisions Grab ‘n Go, The Club and Minute Suites locations.

And they’ll eventually convert the main Admirals Club to more retail, it’s centrally located and can generate more revenue that way. They do need better food options at least, but that’s in some sense giving up – the airport is a place that people wind up spending too much time at, and getting delayed at, while a better airport would mean far less time airside.