Indy airport plan stinks


Every time I take a trip by plane, my friends can count on me to make the same comments on the way to and from the Indianapolis Airport. It is the worst airport I have ever had to use.

The complaints about the airport can be divided into three main areas. First of all, the runways are too far away. Secondly, the terminal is, for the most part, run down and depressing. Finally, it surprises me that I’ve never once had an accident while accessing the terminal through the maze of roads.

You might think that I’m kidding about the first one, but every single time I’ve arrived or departed from the Indy Airport, the airplane has spent a very long 15 minutes taxing to nowhere or at least the start of the runway. I’ve taken a couple of flights where the time spent taxing around Indianapolis was a quarter of the total time the airline projected for the trip — and we still landed early at the destination.

And it doesn’t seem to matter whether you’re coming or going. On my most recent trip back to Indianapolis, at the end of my spring break vacation, the lady sitting in the seat next to me observed that it was almost as if we were landing in Illinois and driving back to Indianapolis.

The second complaint, concerning the terminal, seems to be in the process of being rectified. Most of the time I fly United, but for spring break I headed out on US Air and was pleasantly surprised to find a clean and fresh-appearing concourse. They were also in the process of laying new carpet in the terminal.

These are great improvements and should be undertaken across the entire complex with great speed. Having once spent some time on concourse A, I can testify that it is a dingy dumpy place that looks like it was last painted in the last century.

Finally, the roads that one must drive on when going to the airport are dangerous. Traffic headed in different directions around the airport intersect at the same level and in a couple of spots with only stop signs and no stop lights. This seems to me to be a recipe for an accident. Somehow I’ve always managed to escape without being involved in one or ever seeing one.

But there is a ray of hope. I saw on the news after I returned from my spring break trip in the middle of last week that the airport is considering building a new terminal. I hope they quickly move from the “considering building” stage to the “actually building” stage quickly. According to the news, the proposed site is on the south side off of I-70, somewhat closer to the runways.

Once they build the new terminal, which should alleviate all three of my complaints about the current airport, Las Vegas can reclaim its rightful place as my least favorite airport on the planet.

I once spent two hours, between midnight and 2 a.m., wandering through the Las Vegas airport waiting for my connecting flight. I also saw the worst job in the world while sitting there: an elderly woman was wandering amongst the slot machines in the middle of the concourse wearing a change belt and making change for people who needed to scratch their gambling itch while waiting at the airport.

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