Denver’s airport has been a disaster for the past 30 years – since the time leading up to its opening. Case studies in failure have been written about its baggage handling system. But now it’s the systems handling people that are a problem.
For over a decade the TSA checkpoints at Denver airport have become a mess, from layout to staffing, and it’s one of the few places in the country where a passenger with both PreCheck and CLEAR can frequently experience security screening like the average passenger at any other airport. (Atlanta airport is bad in this regard, but Denver is much worse.)
But problems only get worse once you clear security because you still need to get to the concourses. The airport doesn’t have a great way to walk. They have a train. But the train frequently doesn’t work.
Here we have a Denver Airport play, which played out in two acts this week.
Act One: Tuesday, the ribbon cutting for the airport’s new train reliability efforts.
Bust out the champagne – six new train cars are officially in service!
The first six of our 26 new train cars are now on the tracks, taking passengers to and from the Terminal. pic.twitter.com/jY56eYGgKb
— Denver Int'l Airport (@DENAirport) July 2, 2024
Act Two: Wednesday, passengers experiencing Denver airport’s newly reliable trains.
DEN
“Trains down again. This one is painful. Been down almost 30 minutes. Security trying to manage crowds. TSA screening stopped. No more room for people on the platforms. “ pic.twitter.com/3dPtKBcoyL— JonNYC (@xJonNYC) July 3, 2024
Denver airport is terrible to get to and from, and get to and from gates, for local passengers. It’s quite good as a connecting airport. I do not mind flying United or Southwest via Denver, but I do not like flying to and from Denver. The airport itself reminds me over and over why.
There is a reason my favorite method of dealing with Denver is originating/ending in Cheyenne.
The United Express/ Sky West regional ends up past security, and the Cheyenne airport is eight blocks away from my house. My favorite end of trip: walking home.
The ribbon cutting takes the cake. When are they adding buses or building the walking tunnel?
Given that they copied the parallel concourse model of ATL, made the concourses wider and added space between concourses, it is mind-numbing to understand why they didn’t copy the full-length pedestrian walkway between the terminals. Even with the addition of F, it is still possible to walk the entire length of the airport which has more concourses than DEN.
These are not exaggerated stories, either. DEN is a terrible O/D airport for the reasons cited above.
However, I have to say that I have had even worse experiences flying out of ATL. Horrible. TSAPreCheck + Clear and it still took 45 minutes one time, 55 the next. Before I had Clear, PreCheck took 90 minutes. 90 minutes! Atlanta is overrated and sucks in every way. At least DEN is nice once you finally get to your rental car.
Honorable mention here: MCO.
Gary, it’s because this airport worships the devil. If it was a Delta hub, it would be the best airport. God bless Delta. Those trains are full of heathens that should have flown Delta. In your name, we pray. Amen.
Denver is my home airport, which is to say it’s hellish. It’s located practically in Kansas for most of us Denverites. Thus, transportation to and from the airport is expensive, time consuming and intimidating during rush hour and inclement weather. I always go 4 hours before my flight in case there’s a mishap with TSA or the trains. When it was built, I’d say DIA stands for dumb idea anyway. This monstrosity was created for economic incentives—attracting airlines from around the world. And that has worked from a connectivity standpoint. But it’s a miserable experience for all of us who live in the Denver area. For several years I lived in Phoenix. I’d drive to terminal 4 (about 10 minutes away from home), park on level two, walk a few steps to the elevator and arrive within seconds to check in. Take the elevator to the concourses. Easy peasy. That day is long gone. Travel sucks.
Denver is my home airport. I’m a frequent traveler and every time I go, there’s a new construction hot mess awaiting me. CLEAR is absolutely useless and I’m not renewing my membership. It’s faster to go through the regular pre-check line than the clear line now. Southwest baggage is A nightmare, it can take up to an hour to get your bags as opposed to United where my bags are usually on the carousel by the time I get to baggage claim.
Good Times. Stapleton was just a 15 min drive from downtown. Parking was minutes away at TK UA Training Center.
I once paid more for roundtrip cab fair between DEN and downtown Denver than the plane ticket from the East Coast.
Sure it was only slightly more (and included the tip), plus I got a great deal on the flight, but still..
I was based in DEN for many years and it really is a poor design/location. It’s just an epic fail that they’re now trying to fix.
And yes, I know it’s “fare” not “fair”.
Gary,
Now that United flies out of two concourses over there it’s possible your connection will be in the other one and you have to deal with the broken train nightmare.
This has happened to me recently and I will avoid connecting through there.(Might be different for SWA as I think they operate from only one concourse).
@Thing1 … It is “fare” , not “fair” .
My three least favorite airports:
ATL
DEN
SEA
My home airport is LAX and Precheck/Clear rarely take more than a couple minutes and now that all terminals connect, it’s a breeze.
Building an entirely new airport midway between Denver and Colorado Springs is long overdue.
COS beckons if you live in SoDo or DTC or Parker.
A lot of us miss Stapleton to this day.
Parallel concourse airports are great for moving large amounts of connecting traffic, but are never the most pleasant for local traffic. Add on that DEN is so far out and it’s even more inconvenient. At least ATL added a second landside checkin area with Concourse F.
You forgot:
-escalators that are consistently out of service
-baggage claim that’s so far from planes it takes up to an hour to get your bags
-new security checkpoint being promoted to alleviate crowds but doesn’t count for the permanently closed north checkpoint
Thick headed bureaucratic management
Yes the new trains will help some capacity wise
But they already have a shuttle bus infrastructure in place. Why not make it an ongoing operation to divert some of the load off so you get fewer demand peak crowding moments. I get that a full shutdown creates an unavoidable mess, but come on, get the shuttles going full time to alleviate the general crowding.
They solicited permanent alternatives 3 years ago…and are only now getting around to narrowing it. Probably a boondoggle of a bridge. But they’ll need something grand to handle the growth they’re expecting.
But for goodness sake, spend some money to get the shuttles in regular non emergency operation.
I might have a heart attack b/c I’m about to agree with… Tim Dunn!
Whatever critiques you might (correctly) make against ATL, their train has a backup that would work even in a complete power outage… you can walk between terminals. In fact, I’ve made that trek all the way from one end to the other on foot (I was bored on a long layover).
DEN is stupid.
I think there are even other examples. DTW has a tunnel that would work without power, as does ORD (Terminal 1 to outpost or w/e it’s called). They had LOADS of successful examples and plenty of reasons to choose the right approach. They just made what was objectively the wrong choice.
Won’t rehash what others have said above that completely hit the nail on the head. Visited Denver a couple weeks ago and my TSA experience was surprisingly…smooth. 5 minutes in and out through CLEAR. I consider myself quite lucky.
I think the last paragraph sums it up great: “It’s quite good as a connecting airport. I do not mind flying United or Southwest via Denver, but I do not like flying to and from Denver.”
I intentionally have layover-ed through DEN a few times for lunch/dinner because my favorite lounge is there. When trains are working (big if) it’s super convenient and can get where you need to be quick like.
I had good luck in DEN a few weeks ago making it through precheck, to a functioning train, and the omelette bar in the centurion lounge before my colleague who insisted he use the clear lane. But other than that, it’s well documented this airport sucks. But I think ATL ,CLT, and MCO are far worse.
Some of us have worked at DEN and seen the non-passenger levels. They are absolutely disgusting (think tile floors that look like they haven’t been mopped in 25 years, broken vending machines, crazy non-logical hallways, etc). That doesn’t even talk about the fact of how much time/money it takes to get any construction done there. I spent a lot of time there, got very good at moving around, and still didn’t like it. Just more bad decisions/management to hammer home the point of this article.
I live in central Denver. With no traffic, it is faster from my door to airplane gate to fly out of colorado springs which is 70+ miles away. Plus parking is alot cheaper there which makes up for the extra gas to drive there.
With how long and big and long these concourses arethere should be three tunnels. One on the west side, one in the centre, one in the east side.
This was a clean sheet design airport too. Did one of the engineers not want an excuse to walk here later or?
I can’t remember the last time I used the train while connecting at ATL. I can’t understand the stupidity of anyone who approves of a design where you can’t walk between any two gates in an airport built in the last 40 years.
DIA PROBLEMS NOW FIXED?! I COMMUTE BETWEEN LAS VEGAS AND DENVER FOR WORK. I’VE NOT HAD THE PROBLEMS DESCRIBED IN THE PIECE. MOST RECENTLY I FLEW DEN>LAS TUESDAY JULY 2 LATE AFTERNOON. THERE WAS NO TSA LINE, SO I DIDN’T EVEN BOTHER USING MY TSA PRE-CHECK. THE TRAIN WAS RUNNING NORMALLY.
NOTE: TSA AND CLEAR AT DIA HAVE SURPRISINGLY LIMITED HOURS FOR A TOP 10 US AIRPORT, AND, EVEN WHEN AVAILABLE, AREN’T OFFERED AT THE MAIN TSA CHECKPOINT: YOU OFTEN HAVE TO HOOF IT TO ANOTHER PART OF THE TERMINAL TO USE TSA PRE-CHECK AND CLEAR, EVEN WHEN THEY ARE IN SERVICE.
PS: THERE IS A WALKWAY TO TERMINAL A, WHERE FRONTIER OPERATES, BUT NOT TO UNITED’S TERMINAL B, OR TERMINAL C. SO FRONTIER IS A GOOD HEDGE AGAINST POSSIBLE TRAIN PROBLEMS AT DIA
No American airport compares to the dysfunctional, expensive Honolulu airport. Born and raised there, airport has been under construction since the advent of the jet age in the early 60s. Expensive food, no signage, hot, long walks, TSA forever. One would think the State would be ashamed to have tourists land in a thrid world airport? Think again, my friends. Our old airport was a quonset hut with six gates and a wire fence. You could walk right up to the tarmac. Plus a beautiful back drop of the mountains! ALOHA!
19 reasons why I hate Denver Airport.
1. Access roads only 2 lanes in part.
2. No web site/app to determine if parking lots are full.
3. Completely inadequate on site parking. Solution: add more levels to terminal parking garages. This will never happen because the iconic “mountain range” terminal roof is a work of art and more parking levels would block the view of the “work of art”.
4. Sign for full Valet Parking is at the Valet drop off – should be by the turn off for the Valet Parking or sooner. If valet is full, have to leave the airport to come back to see if garage space is available.
5. “Back to the terminal” turn off on leaving the airport has been blocked off. Have to drive 2 miles to get to the first exit and turn around there.
6. Uber/Lyft drop off is 1 level down from departures.
7. No easy way to drop off a bicycle.
8. Elevator doors in main terminal are too narrow to allow a bike case cross wise. Have to put bike case sideways which is inherently unstable.
9. Not all elevators go to all floors but you don’t know until you are at the elevator.
10. Since parking is unpredictable need to always allow an extra 30 mins in case you can’t park on site and have to park off site.
11. No underground passenger walkway between terminals. If train is not working, airport comes to a halt. This is mind boggling (think Atlanta which has numerous underground passenger walkways which are wide enough otherwise to handle golf carts. They even have curved ramps – like parking garages- to allow the golf carts to drive up to the passenger concourses)
12. Doors on train don’t always open so have to scramble to go to a door that does open.
13. Passenger terminal escalators are too narrow.
14. Toilets are filthy.
15. On international arrival there is a 10-15 minute walk to immigration including a steep upward slope going over an airbridge. Hard to navigate if you have been flying for a long time and are not used to the altitude.
16. Arrivals international baggage claim is congested, dirty and third world like.
17. Paucity of coffee shops in main terminal , etc to wait for arriving passengers.
18. Parking is very expensive.
19. No consolidated rental car terminus. After the airport was opened , they had an opportunity to fix this. I was flying out of Denver the month after the airport opened (yes the trains broke down and we were bussed to the airside). The rental cars were located on the top floors of the terminal parking garages! Obviously that did not last long.
I must disagree with all. DEN my home airport. Rarely if ever does it take me more then 1hr 10min to get from my door to the gate. I live 35 miles away. It use to take me sometimes an hour in LA traffic just to get to the airport from 10 miles away. In hundreds of trips through the airport have never experienced a train breakdown. Can TSA sometimes be 10-15 minutes even with pre and clear. Yes. Sometimes. Thanks to the toll road many of us never deal with traffic. The only thing I wish they had and don’t understand why they don’t is walkability between terminals. Yes SWX baggage can be tedious because of terminal distance but luckily I rarely check a bag when flying SWX as it is a commuter flight for usually a couple days. DEN in the not so distant future will be the busiest airport in the country thanks to the foresight to build it where there is plenty of room to expand. No other airport in the country has that possibility.
@Maleko, my experience is that third world countries have nice airports, better than some in the USA.
Light rail to DIA from downtown – 37 minutes. I admit occasionally that has issues. Security with the West open is now typically 10 minutes tops. It is a construction zone right now. But decent food options and a good Capital One lounge. It’s not all great, but it’s certainly not the worst. Logan? LAX?
Denver Guy, but other than that how do you like it? Ha. I agree on every point! Denver layout blows. The attempt at a tee-pee cluster never worked for me. Hideous, distracting. I have had to do that drive off two mile turn around over the frustration of valet full. Stress levels off the charts. Too many hurdles to clear. I miss the laid back Stapleton days.
Joanie- One workaround for the full valet is to call them when you’re driving to the airport and ask if they have capacity. Get the name of the person you’re talking to. Next time you’re there, ask them for their voice phone number. The problem is, they don’t always answer the phone.