Monday, September 22, 2008
The Saga of the Pittsburgh Airport
If there's one single thing I've grown accustomed to through the years of living in Pittsburgh, it's without a doubt, the Pittsburgh Airport. I know what they say about the Quality of the Airport Inverse Principle (the nicer an airport is, the worse the actual city associated is), but, Pittsburgh might just have to be the exception to this golden rule –– and it's not just because they have a little subway that'll take you to the terminals, and how it makes me feel like I'm living in Terminator 2.
Without getting off on a tangent about how awesome Terminator 2 was, I could just go on about how well engineered and thought-out Pittsburgh's airport has proven to be. Now, I'm not familiar with how it's ranked on the other side of the aviation
curtain (for all I know, it could be like landing on that airstrip in the Andes), but from a customer's perspective, it's leagues above the Philly airport.
Why? For starters, the Pittsburgh airport doesn't have an entire section of underground terminal stations that distinctly resemble subway stations. And I'm not even kidding. Philadelphia International Airport has the distinction of being one of the only airports in the nation that still looks like it's stuck in a Stargate between the 1950s (in which everybody is standing around in Sunday best smoking unfiltered Camels, natch). When you leave an airplane and they all funnel you through a long corridor out to the pickup swingbys, Philly kindly herds you through halls made out of hastily-taped drywall. Honestly. They tried to modernize and they seemed to have given up several times, half way through.
And once, I came off a flight and went the wrong way out. I literally ended up underground. To this day, I have no idea how I got down there and simultaneously, I have no idea how I ever got out.
Pittsburgh, on the other hand, had to be one of the most crowd-controlled experience I've ever had. There were lines, but like every other airport in history, that all bottlenecks around TSA. Following being treated like dirt by hideously annoyed security workers, you get emptied out into the terminals without so much as a single line. Now, everywhere I travel, I'm constantly mentally comparing everything to this airport. It's big and empty sometimes (unlike Philly), but everything seems so well thought out and securely built. But hey, I guess, what are you going to do with a couple thousand unemployed factory workers anyway?
Plus, it's well-lit and doesn't smell like a port-a-potty. That's a big plus.
Don't get me wrong – Philly is an amazing city with a culture unmatched. However, we've got our problems. They're slowly getting worked on, but the one barometer for the city's fluctuating health is our airport. When our heart is beating, we're building new wings and modernizing everything. When we're laying in bed, our airport looks like a dollar store puzzle.
But hey, no matter what, we've got Mummers.
Without getting off on a tangent about how awesome Terminator 2 was, I could just go on about how well engineered and thought-out Pittsburgh's airport has proven to be. Now, I'm not familiar with how it's ranked on the other side of the aviation
curtain (for all I know, it could be like landing on that airstrip in the Andes), but from a customer's perspective, it's leagues above the Philly airport.Why? For starters, the Pittsburgh airport doesn't have an entire section of underground terminal stations that distinctly resemble subway stations. And I'm not even kidding. Philadelphia International Airport has the distinction of being one of the only airports in the nation that still looks like it's stuck in a Stargate between the 1950s (in which everybody is standing around in Sunday best smoking unfiltered Camels, natch). When you leave an airplane and they all funnel you through a long corridor out to the pickup swingbys, Philly kindly herds you through halls made out of hastily-taped drywall. Honestly. They tried to modernize and they seemed to have given up several times, half way through.
And once, I came off a flight and went the wrong way out. I literally ended up underground. To this day, I have no idea how I got down there and simultaneously, I have no idea how I ever got out.
Pittsburgh, on the other hand, had to be one of the most crowd-controlled experience I've ever had. There were lines, but like every other airport in history, that all bottlenecks around TSA. Following being treated like dirt by hideously annoyed security workers, you get emptied out into the terminals without so much as a single line. Now, everywhere I travel, I'm constantly mentally comparing everything to this airport. It's big and empty sometimes (unlike Philly), but everything seems so well thought out and securely built. But hey, I guess, what are you going to do with a couple thousand unemployed factory workers anyway?
Plus, it's well-lit and doesn't smell like a port-a-potty. That's a big plus.
Don't get me wrong – Philly is an amazing city with a culture unmatched. However, we've got our problems. They're slowly getting worked on, but the one barometer for the city's fluctuating health is our airport. When our heart is beating, we're building new wings and modernizing everything. When we're laying in bed, our airport looks like a dollar store puzzle.
But hey, no matter what, we've got Mummers.
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