1. Public transportation between airport and city.

An in-airport rail—train or metro—is usually better than a bus link. Happily, there are many airports across Europe with rail stations underneath or adjacent to airports. London City, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Rome Fiumicino, among many others, deserve positive evaluation. Bus links are fine in theory, though nobody likes jockeying for tickets and playing finicky ticket vending machine roulette games. (Are you listening, Ciampino?)

2. Good, affordable restaurants.

Big international chain restaurants don’t add much value. An outpost of a good local restaurant is always preferable to a placeless chain restaurant. And while we’re it, prices wildly out of tune with the local cost index are alienating, and surely end up convincing many passengers not to purchase any meals at all. An airport pricing structure keyed to local pricing norms might very well translate into people actually spending more money on meals in airports.

3. Free wireless Internet.

Kastrup. Photo: Terry Wha

Not so hard to set up, increasingly anticipated by many travelers, and thankfully more and more common. If Chisinau International Airport can provide free wifi to its passengers, then every European airport should.

4. Time management tools.

An information feed at Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport lets passengers arriving at the airport know how long security lines are going to take. This is invaluable, even if it runs the risk of overkill in a country as efficient as Denmark.

5. A distinctive sense of the local.

Lisbon and Helsinki both have little shops stocked with smart Portuguese and Finnish products, respectively. A shop selling local products fulfills an essential ambassadorial function. It offers departing passengers the opportunity to purchase last-minute gifts of local relevance. Any airport can install shops hawking traditional duty-free items. A smartly-managed airport will attempt to tie its identity to that of the surrounding city, country, or region.

6. Scale.

Small airports are often the most user-friendly, but scale is more important than size. Kilometers of corridors are institutional and annoying. Space should be filled up with restaurants, shops, and lounge spaces. Amsterdam’s Schiphol may be enormous, but it is well scaled, with an appropriate density of retail establishments and frequent postings notifying passengers of walking time between terminals.

What features did we miss?

Anything this list misses outright? Let me know what you value in an airport in the comments section.

The post Flights: Six essential features of good airports appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

In the spring of 2006, I was able to score some super-cheap tickets on Ryanair for a last-minute getaway to Barcelona from London, where I was living. It had been a great weekend, made possible I only had to pay the airport tax. The catch? I had to fly into and out of two less-than-central airports, London’s Stansted and Barcelona’s Girona airport. It was worth it, right?

What follows is a diary of my flight experience en route from Barcelona to London.

4:30 PM: I arrive early at the airport for a 6 PM flight. We all know you have to get to the gate before the other passengers in order to snag the best seat.

5:00 PM: Shortly after check-in, an announcement is made. The flight has been delayed an hour.

Ok, some extra time to score a panini at Girona’s atmospheric café. (In the above photo, do I look like I’m ready for take-off?)

Tip: Stock up on food, just in case. Girona’s airport café closed at 9 p.m. I’m glad I grabbed a sandwich when I did. Others would not be so lucky.

7 PM: A second announcement. The flight has been delayed for another hour. All assembled groan and pull out iPods, books and approved electronic devices. One nearby traveler starts clipping his nails over a waste basket, violating all manner of social codes (are clippers even allowed on airplanes?).

8:15 PM: A third announcement. Drum roll, please: The flight has been delayed for another two hours. The announcer says, with a tinge of exhaustion in her voice, “We hope to leave by 11. Thank you for your patience.” The thought of work the next morning was beginning to make me vaguely nauseous.

Around 10 PM: Boredom sets in. All other flights have taken off. The airport feels empty, save the other poor souls flying to Stansted. With hardly anyone around, I attempt to fit myself, horizontally, into a row of seats in any way that could lead to sleep. I am not successful.

Above: Nothing happening under flourescent lights.

Tip: Bring back-up diversions. That could mean catching up on your trip journal, watching all the TV shows you earlier loaded up on your iPod, making progress on that novel, or even flipping through some celeb mags. In short, have something to do. I had packed “Madame Bovary,” which only helped put me to sleep.

11:30 PM: All other flights have left the Girona airport, and there’s still no sign of our airplane. The 20 Stansted-bound passengers are told we will not take off until after midnight. No excuse is given.

Tip: Make friends…if there are any out there. At some point after midnight, I found myself chatting with a couple from Los Angeles. A bottle of vodka became open. (Glad they took advantage of Duty Free when it was open…hours ago.) I pass up a shot (work seems ludicrously close), but others around happily partake. The mood lifts… and distorts.

1:30 AM: We take off, nine hours after my arrival at the airport.

Tip: Know when to go! Turns out there’s more than one good reason not to check any luggage on a budget flight. If you’re delayed, you could risk missing the last bus out of the arrival airport.

2:30 AM: We arrive at Stansted and immediately there’s a mad dash for the bus to London. And for good reason: The last one leaves the airport at 3 am (and sometimes earlier, depending on reasons I couldn’t quite understand). If you miss the last bus, you have to get a taxi, which can cost upwards of £60, or wait until 7 am when the buses start up again. I make the bus.

3:30 AM: I’m dropped off at Marble Arch on Oxford Street. What’s my name? Who am I? And how do I get a taxi? Work the next morning was, well, another story…

In the end, this experience didn’t deter me from flying on budget airlines. Over the next year, I’d often take cheap flights, including easyJet and Aer Lingus, for quick getaways. But I learned something about flexibility that long night in Girona.

Read another Cheapo’s tale of a long night in Stansted. Got a good airport story? Leave a comment or send us a note.

The post Ryanair diary: One Night in Barcelona’s Girona Airport appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.