Airport layovers you can love
Shop, dine, get blissed out at hubs and gateways world-wide
By Peter Greenberg
The first time I found myself at an airport with a few hours to kill, I was confronted with several depressing choices. I could a) sit in an uncomfortable plastic chair and listen to Montovani, b) sit in another uncomfortable plastic chair and insert quarters into a small black-and-white TV and watch bad soap operas, c) try to guess the ingredients inside the mystery hot dog at the combination news-stand/snack bar. Air travellers: Times have changed.
You can get your cavities filled at JFK International Airport’s walk-in dental clinic.
AT A GROWING NUMBER of airports, you can shop for things you actually need or want, eat food that’s actually tasty as well as nutritious, be entertained, take a shower and even sleep in a real bed. You can have a sauna, exercise or buy a rare book. You can use a fully operating temporary office, complete with secretary, fax machines and personal computers.
In short, many airports are trying to become a practical extension of your daily life rather than a hindrance to it.
You can get your cavities filled at JFK International Airport’s walk-in dental clinic. At McGhee Tyson airport in Knoxville, check out the wooden rocking chairs and watch everyone else take off.
Slowly, surely, some airports are becoming fun.
Chicago
O’Hare International Airport in Chicago has a “Kids on the Fly” learning and play space in Terminal 2 developed by the Chicago Children’s Museum.
For more information, visit Expedia.com
Dallas-Fort Worth
The Hyatt Bear Creek Golf Club, located at the southwest corner of the airport, is a 336-acre club featuring two 18-hole championship golf courses.
For more information, visit Expedia.com
Denver
Travellers can get their kinks worked out at A Massage, Inc. in the Jeppesen Terminal (Level 6 West) from 7:30 a.m.–9:30 p.m.
For more information, visit Expedia.com
London Heathrow
The Virgin Clubhouse has a sushi bar, putting green, music room, ski simulator, hydrotherapy bath, beauty and haircutting salon, massage room, relaxation room and shower rooms.
Los Angeles
At Los Angeles International Airport, the best place to sit and watch other planes take off is at the Encounter restaurant, which rises 70 feet in the air at the centre of the airport.
New York La Guardia
Got a toothache? The airport has a dental office on-site. You'll find it in the Central Terminal Building, upstairs behind the American Airlines ticket counter.
Washington Dulles
The Lounge Café Cyberflyer on the upper floor of the Main Terminal (west end) has two Internet hook-ups.
Boston
Legal Sea Foods, a popular local chain, has a full-service restaurant in Terminal C, a café in Terminal B, and Express branches in Terminals A and C.
Atlanta
For true peace and quiet, stop in at the chapel, located on the west side of the Main Terminal's three-story atrium, or simply sit in the atrium itself.
You can eat very well in one of the oyster bars at Logan International Airport in Boston. Fresh crab and salmon are always on the menu at San Francisco International Airport restaurants.
At Honolulu International, you can rent a bed, or an eight-hour package deal provides you with both a bed and shower.
BOOK-BUYING HEAVEN
At Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, check out the Renaissance Book Shop on the concourse level. The bookstore sells both new, used and rare books. This is not only one of my favourite airports (locals like to call it Chicago’s secret airport), but one of my favourite bookstores.
In fact, at least once a year I will fly into Milwaukee and give myself at least a three-hour layover so I can go to the bookstore and buy books. I usually buy about 50 of them. I put them on my credit card and have them shipped at a nominal fee back to my home in California. No schlepping, and even better … no sales tax.
The Rome airport offers wine tastings. The new international terminal of San Francisco International Airport has a 5,000-volume library and museum of flight. The Greater Pittsburgh International Airport boasts 100 separate stores known as “The Airmall.”
O’Hare International Airport in Chicago has a “Kids on the Fly” learning and play space in Terminal 2 developed by the Chicago Children’s Museum. The 2,200-square-foot area is equipped with a build-your-own-Chicago Lego space, a mock cargo plane to clamber around on and a fantasy helicopter.
The airport also has a “Back Rub Hub” in terminal three offering chair massage sessions. (As long as you’re going to be depressed by a long wait at the airport, you might as well be depressed and relaxed!)
RENT A PRIVATE OFFICE
Airports throughout Europe now offer comprehensive business centres. For example, at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, you can get a private office equipped with computer and full Internet access. (The rates are a bit steep — about $20 an hour.)
Believe it or not, Schiphol even has a casino.
Need a manicure? Check out Ronald Reagan National Airport in Washington.
Denver International Airport has a massage bar. And at McCarran
International Airport in Las Vegas, there’s a 24-hour fitness centre. It’s a fully operational gym right at the airport, with more than 1,500 regular frequent-flying members. Cost: just $15.
Stuck at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport? There’s a golf course at the southwest corner of the airport that allows you to rent clubs.
RENT A MOVIE
If you’re delayed in Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Jose, Minneapolis or San Diego, the latest airport amenity is DVD rentals offered by InMotion Pictures. For about $12 you get the DVD player, and movie titles rent for as little as $2.50. Savvy travellers rent the player for their round-trip flights and at least three movie titles.
Orlando International Airport houses 15,000 acres. It’s the third largest in the United States in terms of geography. It’s an airport I actually like. Now, with the addition of a fourth airside terminal building, the airport now boasts 46 name-brand stores, 24 restaurants and a microbrewery. (Tip for beer lovers: Show up on Wednesdays when the freshly brewed batch is ready.) Winter Travel Guide
I also like the airport because the Hyatt Hotel is located within the terminal. The 446-room hotel is great for business travellers. If I’m flying in and need to stay at the hotel, I call ahead and have the bellman meet me in baggage claim. I can actually check in to my room right there while waiting for my luggage. It’s a great time saver.
Want to shop? Sure, there’s a Disney Store (what a surprise), a Universal Studios store and a Discovery Store. But there’s also a “Bijoux Turner” store, with none of its 8,000 items more than $10.
TAKE A DIP IN THE POOL
In Miami, there’s a hotel at the airport as well. But it is definitely not one of my favourites. It more closely resembles the original airport hotel — an afterthought used only for temporarily housing stranded travellers.
But there is one upside to this hotel. I’m not keen on staying there, but if you have a few extra hours at the airport, take the elevator in terminal E up to the eighth floor, and that’s where you’ll find the Miami International Airport Hotel’s health club, open from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. For about $8, you get a dip in the outdoor pool or you can run along the rooftop track.
What if you’re travelling with your kids?
At the new Hong Kong airport, there’s a great Cable & Wireless business centre in the check-in hall. If you have the time, check out the Oriental Massage Centre on the level six concourse. I especially recommend the foot massage.
DO SOME UPSCALE SHOPPING
In England, there’s the concept of “retail therapy” at airports. A recent survey showed that most travellers were so stressed at airports they spent very little time shopping. Not anymore. Heathrow Airport has plenty of upscale shops, with branches of Harrods, Pinks, Austin Reed and other well-known stores. There is also an exercise room with stationary bikes and Nautilus equipment, along with lockers and showers. For $5 more, you can play a game of racquetball. Alternatively, just sit on the windy terrace sipping a frozen daiquiri and watch others exercise.
In Singapore, airport officials often offer a two-hour tour of the city, and if you’re changing flights, they’ll waive the departure tax.
TAKE A JUNGLE HIKE
Are you looking for a bolder airport layover experience? At the new Kuala Lumpur International Airport in nearby Malaysia, you can do a hike along the trails in the jungle nearby.
You can find one of Europe’s most complete shopping centres at the Frankfurt-Main airport. The 100-shop complex opens early and closes late. The stores sell everything from smoked salmon to stuffed toy bears. There are 30 restaurants, two supermarkets, antique and modern art stores, Harrod’s, pharmacy, dry cleaner, locksmith and shoemaker.
At Denver International Airport, there are cosy corners at the south end of the Jeppesen terminal. Concourse A has a great view of the Rocky Mountains. London’s Heathrow Airport has a number of children’s play areas in each of the airport’s four terminals.
Remember the rocking chairs in Tennessee? Philadelphia’s airport has them as well. Look for the chairs between the B and C terminals.
At Singapore’s Changi airport, you can go swimming, hit the hot tub, or play virtual reality games.
At Los Angeles International Airport, the best place to sit and watch other planes take off is at the Encounter restaurant, which rises 70 feet in the air at the centre of the airport. Or take the free shuttle bus to the nearby Hilton Hotel. For $10 you get all-day access to the 24-hour fitness centre at the hotel, including workout facilities, sauna and steam.
GET WIRED TO THE INTERNET
For type A people like me who dream of 24/7 access to a T-1 line, you can visit “Laptop Lane” at 13 airports throughout the United States. You get your own office with PC, printer, fax and the high-speed T-1 line. Each cubicle has two laptop ports, so you can use your own computer, not just theirs, to access the line. (www.laptoplane.com).
Before you ever get to the airport, log onto www.quickaid.com, perhaps the most wide-ranging directory of airport Web sites, with links to almost 160 international airports.
Quickaid.com will also help you locate lounges within the airports where it pays to become a member.
For example, in Hong Kong, the “Wing,” Cathay Pacific’s first-class VIP lounge, is one of the best in the world. It features a complete Elemis Day Spa, two restaurants, a long bar, relaxation rooms, shower rooms and computer rooms with Internet access. It is not unusual for travellers to arrive at the airport four to six hours early for their flights just to take advantage of the lounge.
OBTAIN AROMATHERAPY
The same is true in London, where British Airways offers a new arrivals lounge with aromatherapy sessions. The Virgin Clubhouse is now legendary for its vast array of “pre-flight grooming” opportunities. I have yet to visit this lounge at Heathrow without being consistently annoyed — when my flight was called! This very upscale, fun oasis in the middle of the chaos of Heathrow makes you actually want to go to the airport.
In design and function, the Clubhouse deliberately challenges the traditional airport waiting room in very creative ways. Imagine a facility with a sushi bar, putting green, a music room (a sound-proofed and private sitting room equipped with state-of-the-art Linn Hi Fi system and leather sofas), a ski simulator, hydrotherapy bath, beauty and haircutting salon, massage room, relaxation room, and shower rooms.
The Clubhouse has views on two sides and from the roof of airport runways. Then, there’s the library, with a few thousand books.
PRETEND YOU’RE SKIING
But my favourite machine in the joint is the Alpine Racer ski simulator, featuring mounted ski poles for balance and ski steps for rapid turns. Players can choose from three courses progressing in degrees of difficulty, including realistic “naturalistic” elements such as fog and blizzards.
Yes, there’s a business centre, with all the contraptions: computers, fax, photocopier, and telephones, as well as access to the Internet and international financial news services.
But in reality, everyone is either playing on the ski simulator or getting a massage, facial or haircut; or eating sushi and hoping their flights will be inexorably delayed.
Some travellers use their airport layover periods in other constructive ways. A number of airline passengers landing at JFK International Airport and connecting to or from international flights make use of the airport’s full-time dental facilities. You can find the airport dentist, Dr. Robert Trager, in room 2311 in the International Arrivals building. The staff at the dental centre is multilingual and often handles dental emergencies of foreign passengers, though it’s not unusual for some regular transiting passengers to visit Dr. Trager to get their teeth cleaned.
An excellent full-time dental clinic is also available at Frankfurt Airport.
Need to get a prescription filled? There’s a pharmacy right at the Miami International Airport. It’s open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
At Paris’ Charles De Gaulle Airport, look for one of the better delicatessens anywhere. (A word of caution: if you’re buying any fish or meat or fruit, be sure to ask if it has been approved for travel to the United States. Many items sold at the delicatessen are not approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and might be confiscated upon your arrival in the United States.)
BUY CAVIAR, GOLD, PERFUME
Most passengers have just an hour during refuelling stops at the Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, but they head immediately for the airport’s 22,000-square-foot duty-free shopping complex.
Dubai is a duty-free port, and the duty-free complex offers products at unbelievable prices for some of the more traditional purchases: a litre of Johnnie Walker Scotch or a carton of Marlboro cigarettes. I remember my first late-night flight stopping in Dubai on the way to London from Asia.
As I left the plane, aircraft from Ghana, India, Ethiopia, Germany, Amsterdam, Russia, England and Singapore also were lined up, each unloading passengers. For the most part, they weren’t really there for the booze and the cigarettes. They had come for the deals on the Rolex Oysterdate, the Chanel perfume, kilos of beluga caviar, and gold sold by weight.
There’s a special room for Cuban cigars, and even a fur shop, where a mink coat sells for just $1,800. Want a Mercedes or a HumVee? No problem. They sell chocolates, too — about 40 tons of Tobler a year.
Every once in awhile, there’s a rush on scotch. The night I was there, an airplane from LOT, the Polish airline, landed in Dubai on a flight from Delhi. The passengers rushed the store, cash in hand. An hour later, the plane was almost overweight when it roared down the runway toward its final destination in Warsaw.
In just 60 minutes the passengers had purchased 58 videocassette players and 78 cases of Johnnie Walker Scotch. How the plane ever lifted off the ground remains a mystery. But for those who can forget the cramped and uncomfortable flight, it was certainly a layover to remember.
Peter Greenberg
December 2000
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