Let us count the ways… the Business Traveller team pools its knowledge to tackle a mountainous task – limiting the reasons for avoiding airports to just 101

  1. The airport is located an hour out of town, there are few public transport options, and only mafia-run taxis.
  2. There’s a domestic airport and an international one, and they are on opposite sides of town.
  3. Your flight is delayed by the wrong type of leaves/snow/wind/fog/baggage handlers.
  4. You realise there’s more than one terminal, and you’re at the wrong one.
  5. You make it on time, but your passport is in the hotel safe/still in a drawer at home.
  6. When you arrive, it’s clear the World Championship queuing competition is in full swing.
  7. Staff are so transfixed by the slowly shuffling queues, they have gone upstairs to watch them on CCTV.
  8. The only people willing to listen to you complain are newly arrived television news crews, wanting to know how you feel about it all.
  9. The person in front of you is holding up the queue with their embarrassing attempts to get an upgrade.
  10. Or they are moving house, judging by the bulging bags they are attempting to check in.
  11. And they then start to repack as they’ve exceeded the baggage limit.
  12. Your own case is 1kg over the baggage limit and the airline charges a punitive tax for the error.
  13. The signage for departures sends you into the multi-storey car park.
  14. The escalators are broken, and travelators unheard of.
  15. Or they are working, but people are using them as an effort-free way of exploring the airport.
  16. You’re flying during the holiday season, and families have taken over.
  17. You trip up on an abandoned Trunky.
  18. There’s no fresh air, and nowhere to smoke.
  19. The clinical lighting and the hard, cold floor.
  20. Your mobile boarding pass is not recognised at the barrier so you have to go back to check-in.
  21. The fast-track queue at security is no shorter than the regular one.
  22. There is no fast-track security lane.
  23. The security staff are sullen and bark orders at you.
  24. You are forced to take off half your clothes before going through the scanner and you forgot your socks had holes in them, and your trousers fall down because you’ve taken your belt off.
  25. You never know whether you are supposed to take your shoes off or your laptop out.
  26. The security person’s rub-down is too intimate/not intimate enough.
  27. You have to fit all your toiletries into a tiny plastic bag, decant your products into mini-bottles and leave your favourite scent at home.
  28. You have to pay for the tiny plastic bag.
  29. There is a mini tube of toothpaste from an old amenity kit nestling in the corner of your hand luggage that sets off the alarm.
  30. The person in front of you has obviously never been on a plane before because they have no idea of the procedures and slow the whole process down.
  31. Your bag is always the one that gets selected for a random check.
  32. You accidentally left a knife, two pairs of pliers and Mace spray in your bag, and struggle to explain why.
  33. You are hungry but decide to go through security first, only to find nothing but a vending machine selling stale peanuts when you get airside.
  34. The duty-free is more expensive than the high street.
  35. You have to dig around for your boarding pass every time you want to buy something.
  36. There is nothing to buy your children except Smarties and oversized Toblerones so large they come with 50 per cent-off vouchers for diabetes treatment.
  37. All airport bookshops have three-for-two deals but you only want one, two at a push. You buy three anyway, and then can’t fit them into your case.
  38. You leave duty-free smelling of five different fragrances.
  39. There is no departure screen in the restaurant.
  40. The lounges are labelled A, B or C – not useful.
  41. Your airline doesn’t have its own lounge and the one it shares looks like a hospital waiting room.
  42. The lounge dragon isn’t breathing fire that day, which means you merely get bad breath.
  43. There’s nothing left at the buffet.
  44. Or the food is worse than what you’d find outside, but you eat it anyway because it’s there, then end up feeling ill for the remainder of your journey.
  45. You have to pay for the poor quality alcohol.
  46. There’s nowhere to sit so you have to share a table with a loud person on a conference call.
  47. You get your laptop out to check your email, then discover you need a code to access the wifi, so you have to go back to the lounge dragon and make nice.
  48. Having gone to the effort, the wifi is then painfully slow.
  49. Someone has nabbed the last copy of Business Traveller magazine.
  50. There’s one left, but then a power cut plunges you into darkness.
  51. Anti-government protesters occupy the airport and specifically target business travellers.
  52. Your gate doesn’t show until the last minute.
  53. Or is changed at the last second to one on the other side of the airport.
  54. The walk there is long enough for you to start to doubt you’ll make it in time, or at all.
  55. The flight shows as closing unexpectedly early and, after rushing to the gate like a crazy person, you find nothing is happening and it was all just a ploy to get you there early.
  56. Only old people get to enjoy chauffeur transfers to the gate in those golf cart-type vehicles.
  57. You’ve just bought a bottle of water to take on to the plane, then come up against another security check before the gate, where staff promptly take it off you with a smile.
  58. People rush to form a queue as soon as the airline staff arrive at the gate – even though there is allocated seating.
  59. There is such a scrum that you can’t work out where the queue begins and ends, and no priority is given to premium travellers.
  60. Boarding is delayed, so you really could have had another drink in the lounge, and nobody is telling you what is going on.
  61. While you wait, you resort to buying a drink from a vending machine but it swallows your money.
  62. You know you put your boarding card somewhere really safe, you just can’t remember where.
  63. There’s no airbridge so you have to be bussed to the aircraft.
  64. And one has just pulled away when you arrive so you have to wait for the next bus to fill up, despite having paid for speedy boarding.
  65. You land at a remote stand, and it’s raining.
  66. On arrival there is a long delay to disembark because of a lack of gates.
  67.  The airbridge doesn’t work at this end either.
  68. Queues in the terminal are so bad they are leaving people on planes.
  69. Or kettling them along the corridors.
  70. At the terminal, you discover the immigration queue is a mile long.
  71.  There’s no one at the “all other passports” queue, but they won’t wave anyone over.
  72. The e-passport gate does not work.
  73. Immigration officials stare incredulously at your passport picture.
  74. You look guilty when being questioned and then laugh nervously.
  75. You realise you have filled in the immigration form incorrectly, so are sent to the back of the line to do it again.
  76. You are told you should have applied for a visa.
  77. Your priority-tagged bag doesn’t come out until the end.
  78. Or it doesn’t come out at all.
  79. Aggressively keen people at the baggage conveyor push you out of the way or run over your foot with their case.
  80. Sniffer dogs start barking at your case when you’re trying to walk through customs.
  81. Having your bag searched on arrival.
  82. People are greeted with huge hugs by their family, but you are not.
  83. Mafia-run taxis surround you at arrivals.
  84. Your promised pick-up car is nowhere to be seen and the contact number is unobtainable.
  85. The pick-up driver is here but has no board with your name on it, only a mobile number.
  86. And your phone won’t work in this new country.
  87. You need to draw out local currency but the only ATM in the vicinity spits out your card.
  88. Transferring to another terminal involves a lengthy wait for a train or shuttle bus.
  89. Which you have to pay for and can’t.
  90. Your “hub” airport has set connection times that are only achievable if you’re an Olympic sprinter, so you miss your next flight.
  91. Being put on standby reduces you to the level of a homeless person – sitting on the floor, looking morose, and contemplating tucking into the litre-bottle of vodka you bought earlier at duty-free.
  92. The nice bottle of wine that you were assured by duty-free staff you would definitely be able to take through at your transfer airport gets confiscated.
  93. The car parks can only be reached by shuttle buses, which have all stopped running.
  94.  As have all the hotel shuttle buses.
  95.  Car parking fees are more than the local hotel rates.
  96.  The airport hotel is several miles away.
  97.  It’s not an airport hotel, but it still looks like one.
  98. The car park has begun renovations while you were away, and your car has been moved – at a charge – somewhere else.
  99. The car hire company achieves low prices through renting out insurance write-offs.
  100. And was too tight to provide a map of the local area in the vehicle’s glove compartment.
  101. You know you’ll be back to do it all again in less than 24 hours.

Pic: Benjamin Southan