By I think this same observation could apply to Incheon International Airport in Korea as well:
I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.
It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.
Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998. [Thomas Friedman]
I traveled recently this year to Hong Kong and I can personally confirm Friedman’s observations, however instead of flying into Kennedy I flew into LAX which is even worse. Hong Kong like Incheon has an excellent airport that is better then anything I have seen in the US.
I think many Americans do not even understand how bad our airports are compared to overseas because so few Americans travel overseas in the first place.
11:30 am on December 27th, 2008 1
Well, most Americans will still think they have the best airport in the world. And if you mention any Asian airport, they'll laugh and think Asians have dinky little small third world airports with leaky roofs. Boy will they be surprised to find out how much rest of the world has bypassed them in infrastructure.
12:25 pm on December 27th, 2008 2
I've been thinking this for years. Not just about airports, but the other stuff Friedman says. And regarding the airports, they're deficient in one major respect: their people. Going from the helpful staff and courteous employees in Asia and landning in NY or SF where people loaf around, where the janitors have vulgar conversations with each other, where information desk employees and security guards treat me like dirt (I wonder how they'd treat a foreigner), and where customer service and cleanliness are clearly not priorities.
The worst part of returning to the US each year is having to deal with airports. Truly embarrassing. But we've become a culture where customer service is considered beneath everyone.
1:17 pm on December 27th, 2008 3
I agree. It's not only the airports, but the airlines also. Everytime I return to the US I try not take an American carrier. Unless you fly first class or business class you are treated like a number. I never had this problem with a foreign carrier. You are also right in that the airline workers in the US have an attitude. It is just a job to them.
1:31 pm on December 27th, 2008 4
While I agree in principle, it's not really fair to compare terminals which are less than a decade old to two American airports which have been around for more than fifty years. When fresh out of school, I used to work for Northwest and I thought their hubs at MSP and DTW were both very nice airports. Too bad the airline itself was awful.
1:01 am on December 28th, 2008 5
seokso is correct. Having flown into the old HK and (then) seoul) airports they were nothing to crow about.
To rebuild/remodel our old airports would be an enormous challenge, expensive, and make travel even more onerous then it is today.
Yes, we have too many surly "service" staff at all levels. and the worse are the government employees at customs who are rude and unsmiling.
I don't know if this is the kind of they hire or thats what they become after working with the public. Either way many of them need an attitude adjustment.
8:16 am on December 28th, 2008 6
[...] fixing our crappy airports here is something else America should be doing that Korea is passing us up [...]
11:50 am on December 29th, 2008 7
The absolute worst thing about US airports isn't the facilities or the staff but the TSA clods. I'm convinced that the application includes an IQ test, and the maximum scored allowed is 85.