Comments

1. Post about DEN… shits on JFK and MIA. Nice.

   For ski season (and the lower altitude), I much prefer SLC’s new terminal; excellent Delta SkyClub there. Plus, there are so many better National Parks in Utah. All-year-long that’s a winner.

2. Denver is the one place that CLEAR actually got me through security quicker than just Pre-Check. At least they have a train downtown now, but tickets are kind of expensive. If you take the train to the airport, people coming off flights will ask you for your ticket stub so they don’t have to buy one. Weird.

3. The real takeaway is how well ATL did when it rebuilt the passenger terminal complex in the late 70s to open in 1980(ish).

   ATL was shooting to be the world’s largest hub and built a terminal complex that could achieve that.

   while ATL’s concourses could be wider, the system works.

   DFW is a newer airport and poorly designed for connections. Like other airports around the world, DEN tried to copy ATL but took only pieces of the ATL formula.

   CLT is the real national embarrassment. AA pushes way too much traffic through the airport than it can handle – and that only makes ATL look even better.

   DTW is one of the easiest airports in the world to use and it is nowhere near capacity. MSP has been expanded well and while it doesn’t have the same parallel concourses that ATL, DTW and now the new SLC has, MSP works. DL’s big 4 hubs just work well as hubs.

   In contrast, for focusing so much on domestic connections, AA has a very poor set of hub facilities

   UA is spending a fortune to improve and expand its hub airports and those costs will be passed onto passengers.
   and alot of the facilities problems at DEN hurt the local market more than the connecting market. With no other commercial airports in the DEN area excluding COS and the mountain cities like ASE, local travelers have no choice but to put up with DEN.

4. @Tim Dunn “DFW is a newer airport and poorly designed for connections. ” it was expressly built as an o/d airport with each hub carrier getting its own terminal (which would have been fantastic for inline connections),

5. Denver is far more interested in spending big bucks helping illegal aliens than solving the many problems with their airport.

6. @Tim Dunn: “DFW is a newer airport and poorly designed for connections.”

   DFW is designed to arrive at. You walk off the plane and the terminal exit is reight there.

   However, it is not “poorly designed for connections”. The airside train gets between terminals very quickly. As quick or nearly as quick as ATL.

7. @All: Does anyone know why walking access between concourses (beyond A) was not provided at DEN? It has created the inexcusable “single point of failure”.

8. It’s been a while for me, but is the Westin at Denver Airport still very nice?

   Always had a nice stay there

9. I’m not here to defend DEN, we all agree that as far as airports go, it’s not one of the better ones. But this post highlights three particularly bad days over the course of the past year, with issues that were all fixed within a day or so. I could take your favorite place, write an article highlighting it’s three worst days over the past year, and make it sound like hell on Earth. It seems like we’re not happy anymore unless we’re outraged by something.

10. TSA at Denver, however, has actually improved exponentially. The new West TSA set up is how airport security should be done. The rest of the place sucks.

11. Stapleton… Do ya MISS me yet?

12. I fly out of DEN multiple times a week, 52 weeks a year. It truly is a disaster. It is not random or rare that the trains breakdown. CLEAR is an absolute joke as it is always faster to take TSA pre-check. Amex lounge is always overcrowded. Even airports that still aren’t updated or are going through modernization such as SEA are better than DEN.

13. The new West TSA is a model for efficiency, too bad this article didn’t reflect that. Construction is underway for a mirror image on the east side (Southwest side of the airport) and then the South security checkpoint will eventually close. The new equipment, fully staffed TSA and multiple lanes allow fast screening. Widening of Pena Blvd and walking access to other concourses is under discussion; these are definitely areas for improvements. Multiple dining outlets that include many local options as well as newly expanded concourses, even outdoor patios for longer layovers (fireplaces heat them in the winter) add to a better experience. Improvements are being made each month. Come back and see. Note: the security screening picture at the beginning of the article is over a year old. That temporary screening is no longer, replaced by the newer West screening area.

14. I think DEN rates VERY highly for easy of transit connection to the central business district. That in my mind is one of the most important features regardless of the airfield straight-line distance from the CBD. But, agree wholly there needs to be a reliable secondary route between concourses for terminal designs of this type.

15. I don’t understand why DEN is such a whipping boy. Only out of there 25-35 times per year. I travel to airports all over the world is DEN the best. No DXB. sIN imo are tops. But I have never had a train breakdown. TSA no worse then any other major airports. My only complaint is you cannot walk between terminals. DEN is only major airport in the country that has room for expansion so get used to it. Will be the major airport in the country over next 20years

16. We fly in and out of DIA fairly often, thanks to our daughter living in suburban Denver. I also worked at DIA from the day it opened, until I retired.

    I can promise you, the only way you were ever able to get from DIA to I70, a distance of 12 miles, in 8 minutes, was if you were driving around 90 mph in the middle of the night, with no traffic or cops on the road. It never happened for normal passengers/drivers.

    As for the TSA, I’m not sure why everyone finds it difficult to locate. I flew out of there the first couple days the new setup was in place, and I found it simple to negotiate. I just followed the signs. I did have to walk a ways to the precheck entrance, but it want hard to find. I’m always through quickly, even with my fake knees.

    DIA, like all airports, has its issues. It’s annoying as hell when the trains go down, but it’s not an everyday occurrence. I still haven’t had it happen on one of my trips, so knock wood.

    Let’s not resort to exaggeration and hyperbole. There are plenty of lousy airports out there. People’s inability to follow signs to security or to allow plenty of time to get to the airport, doesn’t make it the worst airport.

17. I understand fully what DFW was built to do.

    The fact that Dallas didn’t have the foresight to build an airport that was designed or at least capable of serving as a good connecting hub is what is hard to believe.
    Hubs weren’t invented in the 80s.

    and it is also notable that MCI, which was similar in design to DFW, is tearing down those old terminals which have been replaced by parallel concourses – just as ATL introduced almost 50 years ago

    and DFW is so large of a hub for AA that there is no way to economically fix it – but it results in a massively sprawling complex that is a big reason why AA’s work force is so much larger than everyone else.

18. Is DEN the worst airport in the USA? Well maybe not the worst but in the top 5.

    My background goes back to the year before it opened and I was an employee of an Air Cargo operating company and I was there at 0400 the very first morning of operations.

    From the beginning the upper Management really had no real airport operating experience, fortunately they had enough sense to keep most of the Mid level managers from Stapleton who actually ran the show. However, the upper level Managers were “hired” by the Denver City Council who felt that their friends, relatives and contributors needed those jobs. In addition design and construction contracts “may” have been influenced in the same City Council way.
    Best examples of that are the lack of walkways between concourses, and the great Snow storm shutdown years ago because Upper Management claimed that DEN would never be closed by a snow storm and was down for 2-3 days early in the operational history. And last but not least when will the main terminal construction be finished? Ever? (More City Council assistance). Anyone else remember the opening delays caused by expensive failure of the BAE baggage system?

    We now fly through DEN but start and end our trips in COS.

19. @R.Lopaka

    LOL. I miss how Stapleton was much closer to Denver. DIA feels like Kansas.

    I miss Continental, too. At least UA kept the ‘globe’ following their merger. But, wow, did the pilots and crew get a raw deal—second class citizens, basically.

20. Love it when a post has very little in the form of substance; this is more like the musings of a Karen than anything worthy of an “article”.

    Does the train provide a choke point that isn’t acceptable in a modern airport? Yes.

    Does it happen often? No, and they need to figure out a solution for when it does.

    Is TSA going to be difficult to find when they’re revamping an airport? Yes, and the security you talk about isn’t even the one people should be using. New west is reliably fast even with a very long line.

    Should we miss Stapleton? No, that wasn’t a sustainable location. Only a fool would think back to that wistfully.

    Not near Denver? 37 minutes to downtown on the train or drive 25-45, maybe an hour with bad traffic.

    Lots of disingenuous comments here too. Malarkey about spending money on immigrants (uh, airports are funded by the city, but go on and continue to ignore facts).

    Write a real article for once with some critical thinking.

21. If Homer was writing today, it wouldn’t be Cerberus guarding the gates of Hades, it would be Blucifer.

22. Hey, don’t forget about nosy Karens calling overzealous cops to break into people’s hotel rooms.

23. In fairness, DEN was built as a connecting airport. And for that it does pretty well.

    Nobody expected the place to grow beyond the cow town in the mountains that it used to be. Of course strong liberal leadership resulted in outsized economic opportunity, making the place attractive.

24. I was looking for the United Lounge on Concourse b. I followed the directions from a map only to come to a sign that said it was closed and being upgraded. It was a brutal and wasted effort on the part of this cane using Traveler. I couldn’t believe that the map was not updated.

25. @Tim Dunn: Your comments about DFW would have been true prior to the airside train (branded as SkyTrain) which, as I said, has reduced inter-terminal transit times to comparable levels to parallel concourse airports connected by trains. Prior to the completion of SkyTrain there was a gap of several years where buses had to be used. That was slow. Prior to that, and Osama Bin Laden, their was an unmanned train that ran on the landside. That failed the terrorism test and was a good design, but for that external factor.

    Essentially, your description of changing terminals at DFW is out of date. Go and try it.

    The design of Dallas is actually brilliant if it is your departure or arrival point. It is so quick to get to Uber/Lyft.

    The only major design disadvantage is the lack of a train to the city centre. DART takes me one hour and 10 minutes to my nearest DART stop (a ten minute walk away). It is dirt cheap at approx. $2.50, but take “War and Peace” to read on the way.

26. I commute LASDEN for my job so my perspective is a bit different.

    I take the train or airport express bus from anywhere in the Denver metro area for $10, so no traffic. TBH, there is no reason in Denver to drive or rideshare to the airport.

    I have precheck, so no TSA.

    I personally haven’t experienced any problem with the terminal tram, but there is a pedestrian bridge from the terminal to Concourse A, so even that has a workaround.

    Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Or play smart like me.

27. As a lifelong resident of Broomfield, on US36 between Denver and Boulder, BJC is DEFINITELY not Boulder. BJC originally stood for “Broomfield Jefferson County.” Boulder has their own airport, and it’s not BJC.

28. Agree with others that DEN makes a perfectly fine connecting airport. No Priority Pass lounges and Chase skewered the restaurant benefit, so no places to eat or lounge between connections with a measly Chase Reserve.

    Disagree with those who say originating in DEN is perfectly fine. Have done that a couple of times and it’s a horror show. I take the train from the city so the commute is fine. But the placement of services and the signage to direct me to said services is on par for the worst I have experienced.

29. L3,
    DFW is an inefficient facility for connections. Just because there is a train that carries passengers from terminal to terminal does not mean it is the best design.
    And I have been stuck in one of those trains on a track in the winter. I have never been stuck in ATL’s trains or been unable to get to a concourse when the train is down – which happens far less frequently in ATL than DEN – because there is a pedestrian tunnel.

    and my point was about the much larger number of employees that it takes to connect luggage and serve passengers over the massive AA operation at DFW – very likely a larger footprint than any other airline has at any other airport in the world.

30. @Tim Dunn: Grab a napkin. Draw a topographic map of a DFW design airport and another of an ATL style.

    Notice how tey are the same?

    In more concrete terms, to get from your first terminal to your second at DFW you walk to train stop in the terminal. Take the train. Get off at your destination. At ATL you do the same.

    While the two designs are on all fours regarding connecting, the DFW design is far superior if you are arriving or departing the airport. Parking is more dispersed too. ATL does have the advantage of great MARTA service, something I referred to obliquely earlier.

31. @Tim Dunn: “and my point was about the much larger number of employees that it takes to connect luggage and serve passengers over the massive AA operation at DFW ”

    That doesn’t make sense. To AA DFW is just one long list of gates, and a parallel list of baggage claims. To airline logistics the physical walls of the passenger terminal are irrelevant.

32. Gene Amole is still owed an apology.

33. I whole heartedly agree that’ DEN is among the worst in the country…maybe anywhere. The interminable renovations of the past three years were meant to fix all of the design flaws that went into DIA’s initial design. Yet as someone who operates restaurants, concessions and even contract lounges in other airports across the country, I can tell you that the main reason nothing works is simple: arrogant, incompetent and just plain incapable management, at all levels. Nothing ever gets built on time, nothing ever gets fixed or corrected on time; deadlines don’t matter and are never met. Airport management makes no decisions without worrying what UA thinks, and when they do make a decision, it’s inevitably wrong, has been ill thought-out and has to be redone. It’s why we’re in year 5 of a 3 year renovation project. We have three restaurants that are 26 months late in opening because construction delays within the airport, design mistakes, lack of planning and just plain stupidity delayed the start of our own construction by 23 months. DIA reaction: “Don’t feel special. Everyone else is delayed too.” . Nowhere else in the US have I ever encountered more political interference, management incompetence and “I just don’t care” attitudes like the management at DIA. If you’re politically connected or part of the entourage of whatever mayor happens to be in office, you’ll have a job for two lifetimes…because no project will ever be completed in one.

34. I fully expect to see DIA declared “unfixable” fairly soon with plans for an entirely new airport for only forty billion dollars or so.

35. @fatetta: Thank you. Informed comment is so much more convincing.

36. L3,
    you clearly don’t get it – or don’t want to.

    the majority of passengers at DFW are connecting passengers. the terminal configuration is a poor design for a connecting operation with gates on one side of the terminal. And even for a local airport serving as many destinations as AA does, having a facility with gates on one side of the terminal is inefficient – makes for an extraordinarily long facility.

    And if the configuration that DFW uses were so great, it would have been used for other airport terminals. Even though DFW and DEN are the large all new airports in the US, there have been multiple new terminals built including at DFW which was a ground up facility and terminal 1 at ORD.
    Not a single airport copied the horseshoe configuration that DFW used. MCI destroyed their copy of DFW and replaced it will parallel concourses.

    And the point is still that DEN works fine as a connecting airport; most of the connections are on the same concourse.
    DEN doesn’t work for local passengers.

37. I have lived in Denver for 40+ years. This article is pure bull. You must get paid specifically to write hatchet jobs on everything related to travel. My wife and I fly in and out of DIA regularly and have NEVER encountered the troubles you claim to exist. We fly in and out of many airports. We are regular travelers plus our daughter and grandkids live in Amsterdam. It’s sad to see someone try and earn a living writing totally uninformed articles like this and present them as authoritative opinion. Sad.

38. correction

    …multiple new terminals built including at DTW…

    Parker got a lot of things wrong but he was right that the terminal configuration at DFW adds to AA’s labor costs including because the bags have to be hauled manually between terminals.

39. Let’s see. The airport roadway is congested and there aren’t funds to expand it. There is an adjacent quality fast train line with trains every 15 minutes. Should we incentivize passengers and employees to use the train? Nah, let’s charge $10 per passenger so that as many people as possible ask friends for a ride or take an Uber or Lyft instead or get their employer to provide airport parking. We can put more parking shuttles on the highway, too.

40. It’s also depressing how there is no accountability for airport staff and even their boards. Many of these jobs are political patronage and who knows what goals they serve. But many airport authorities, not only Denver, clearly do not prioritize an efficient operating airport. Instead it’s about unions, developers, politically favored groups, diversity goals. Making the trains run? No one cares about that.

41. You can defend DEN if you want, but you’re left with one irrefutable negative: if the train breaks down your day (if you need to switch terminals) just got terrible. I don’t care how infrequently this happens. It can.

42. TSA at JFK is incredibly bad. At T1, it is third world.

43. WN is introducing incentives to fly through DEN.

44. How did PHL, EWR, IAD, MCO, & LAX not make the list?

    PHL: security lines sometimes into the parking structure, and generally dirty

    EWR: horrible traffic, need to use a bus to change terminals without re-clearing security

    IAD: horrible traffic, still has moon buggies and “temporary” concourses, long walks, Metro station on the other side of the parking lot

    MCO: long lines and long walks

    LAX: horrible traffic and difficult to connect with terminal change, can get crowded

    STL is a small airport comparably, but renting a car there takes forever.

    The new MCI should be a model on how to do a medium-size airport properly. If United and MWAA follow through with their stated plans to build out Tier 2 and Tier 3 at IAD, that could become a large U.S. airport that is not an embarrassment.

45. @Tim Dunn: You need to actually go to DFW and time the airside train. You will find that you are simply repeating things that are wrong. As for a train breaking down on you once. Telling aecdote, no useful contribution to the issue.

    Draw that topographical diagram of the two that I told you. They look the same.

    Why do you keep talking about MCI? Nobody uses MCI:

    Year Passengers (millions)
    2000 11.91
    2001 10.98
    2002 10.87
    2003 10.65
    2004 10.78
    2005 10.88
    2006 10.88
    2007 10.74
    2008 10.37
    2009 9.91
    2010 9.86
    2011 10.04
    2012 10.16
    2013 10.16
    2014 10.17
    2015 10.47
    2016 11.05
    2017 11.63
    2018 11.88
    2019 11.80
    2020 4.49
    2021 7.68
    2022 9.82
    2023 11.55
    2024 11.16 (partial year)

46. L3
    you don’t get it and I am not surprised.

    I am not talking about the speed of the train.

    I am talking about the time and people it takes bags to connect – which adds alot of costs as Parker said – and the fact that using a single side of a building is inefficient. No other airport has used uses the same DFW concept for good reason.

    MCI is a perfect example. The fact that it has been torn down IS the point which you don’t want to accept.

    and IAH was not designed to be a connecting hub either with those star-shaped terminals. UA has spent billions and will spend billions more building concourses with planes parking on both sides of the concourses – which is what UA did at ORD.

    The ATL terminal concept set the global standard for airport design while DFW went for a concept that completely failed to succeed at the hub concept.

47. The information desk staff is wonderful and that is about all I can say good about the Denver airport.
    I lost my laptop in the airport.I believe I may have left it at Clear/TSA but I don’t know. For sure.
    Filed the on line report with the airport as they instructed. Someone called the same day to get a verbal report and tell me that their investigation would take 2 weeks but if I paid them $70+ they would begin right away.
    I was told twice they have not had any luck. and after 30 days they closed the case. TSA takes 6 months..

48. @Tim Dunn: I am glad you have accepted that the DFW train is comparably quick to the ATL.one.

    Now you hang your argument on something Doug Parker said 50 years ago (without attribution).

    That has no relevance to today. Indeed, there is no extra charge or bags at DFW.

    DFW’s “exit at your gate” design is a major feature. Both sides of the terminal are used — for different things.

49. Tim is right for the wrong reasons. I flew out of MCI and DFW quite a lot before 9/11. MCI used to be my favorite airport. You could be plane to car in under 10 minutes. DFW connections were not much trouble when you simply had to walk out to a shuttle. In those days, you checked nearly all of your baggage (for free). I also recall hating ATL in that same period. Just a disaster of an airport.

    In the world of centralized TSA security, MCI and DFW became an absolute nightmare. Overnight they became nearly impossible to use, and the ATL style designs became much more functional as a connecting hub (security in ATL is still a nightmare). The new MCI is similar, but at a much smaller scale. (they did put too much of the flight capacity in the B terminal, which is a hike). It is important to remember that DEN was also designed pre 9/11, but is functionally a post 9/11 airport. Security is now the entire function of the check-in hub. It took what could have been a nice building and destroyed it. Of course, there would have been other design problems, but the post 9/11 security environment has just destroyed a lot of functional airports. We are only now redesigning a good way forward with it (new LGA being a decent case).

50. Our airports were designed for a pre 9/11 world. Even the ones that have been remodeled are still a cluster you know what. Take the South Entrance at DCA Terminal 2. Or the new Harvey Milk terminal at SFO Pre Check is upstairs and it’s not clear by signage that you need to go to the upper level. (Then you have to go back down to the lower level after clearing TSA.)

    In the interim the moron running TSA (which should be abolished but that’s another discussion) wants more flyers to sign up for Pre Check but there won’t be additional screeners or screening lane. You can’t fix stupid.