Where's the airport you would least want to visit?

Start the list with paved airports when you have all of them we'll get down to details.
 
Honestly, I don't see a need to actively avoid North Korean air force bases for 99% of the POA membership.
 
Any American military airport without prior permission.

When I was gliding and landing out a lot, landing on some/all military strips was understood to involve drawn weapons, an 'arrest', a short 'detention', surrender of all camera film (we had 2 cameras mounted in cockpit), and the threat of legal action. I never did it but others told stories.
 
Bill Watson said:
Any American military airport without prior permission.

When I was gliding and landing out a lot, landing on some/all military strips was understood to involve drawn weapons, an 'arrest', a short 'detention', surrender of all camera film (we had 2 cameras mounted in cockpit), and the threat of legal action. I never did it but others told stories.
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You could land at KLHW without permission (it's joint use) :) Just be sure to announce on the CTAF that you're landing "Midcoast" instead of "Wright" (no, it doesn't matter)
 
LAX, as I work here and my landings still aren't perfect. I get enough "constructive criticism" from my instructor and the locals at KTOA and KHHR :)
 
Blythe, I didn't like it there.
 
Blight isn't much better to drive through either :)
 
Old Fart said:
Blight isn't much better to drive through either :)
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Tell me about it. Someone once booked me a hotel in Blythe, I had to pay for another one in Palm Springs.

Remember that SouthWest 737 (at least I think it was a SouthWest 737) a few years back that had a pressurization failure, there was a 6ft hole in the roof. The guy declared an emergency and asked for the closest airport, center tells him it was Blythe, he says something like "next closest." LMAO
 
There's TWO good things about Blythe. I-10 West and I-10 East :)
 
MachFly said:
Remember that SouthWest 737 (at least I think it was a SouthWest 737) a few years back that had a pressurization failure, there was a 6ft hole in the roof. The guy declared an emergency and asked for the closest airport, center tells him it was Blythe, he says something like "next closest." LMAO
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At the altitude they were at when they declared, it was a no brainer. They were practically overhead BLH when the top blew....it was either a spiraling descent to BLH or turn south and land at Yuma....which had emergency services. Either way they would have landed about the same time.

Don't know what the angst is with BLH as an airport. Always been nice to me as a fuel/bathroom stop or a big uncontrolled field to practice at (not many uncontrolled fields in SoCal compared to the east coast).

I'd take BLH over Newark or Teterboro any day.

Now the town of Blythe....well, that is a different story.
 
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Fearless Tower said:
At the altitude they were at when they declared, it was a no brainer. They were practically overhead BLH when the top blew....it was either a spiraling descent to BLH or turn south and land at Yuma....which had emergency services. Either way they would have landed about the same time.
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Yeah I know there were a whole bunch of reasons why Yuma was better. But if you exclude all of them and just listen to the radios....Blythe....Next closest :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:


I'd take BLH over Newark or Teterboro any day.
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As long as your not going in on a friday night Teterboro isn't too bad. They have some nice FBOs there, Meridian even has a movie theater.
 
PASN, St. Paul, in the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea. I have actually seen pictures of it with clear skies, but I never got close to that place without it being absolutely crappy.
 
I don't think I'd avoid an airport because of the way it is maintained or the conditions of the runway/strip. Or the typical weather of the area. I enjoy getting new challenges in aviation.

I know the controllers at McAllen Miller Int. (KMFE) can be rude and they aren't tolerant of any mistakes. I fly in and out of there pretty frequently so I've gotten pretty used to it.
 
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Douglas, AZ (DGL). Unfortunately, my job has taken me there a few times and the place is a hole. The runway is in terrible condition, the border is 1,000 feet from the departure end of 21, and the pilots lounge is a single wide trailor with a shag rug and a chair with questionable stains on it (I typically spend 2 to 5 hours at destinations while the boss does his thing, so it's nice to spend that time somewhere atleast halfway decent)
 
erickfprevost said:
I don't think I'd avoid an airport because of the way it is maintained or the conditions of the runway/strip. Or the typical weather of the area. I enjoy getting new challenges in aviation.

I know the controllers at McAllen Miller Int. (KMFE) can be rude and they aren't tolerant of any mistakes. I fly in and out of there pretty frequently so I've gotten pretty used to it.
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Welcome to POA !
 
Tijuana, when you meant to land at Brown. Vice-versa would be worse, but who does that?

Pretty much any towered airport you didn't intend on landing at would be high on the "sucky" list. Some more so than others.

For intentional landings, I'd expect KORD in winter to be unpleasant for a spam can driver.
 
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Pretty much any airport in Somalia! (Not that I've ever been there.)

Second on my list would probably be Williams Gateway (now Phoenix-Mesa Gateway), after hearing how they handled that pilot deviation a couple of years ago.
 
Palmpilot said:
Pretty much any airport in Somalia! (Not that I've ever been there.)

Second on my list would probably be Williams Gateway (now Phoenix-Mesa Gateway), after hearing how they handled that pilot deviation a couple of years ago.
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And you taxi FOREVER at IWA. :D

Personally, the worst airline terminal I've sat in was Hanoi. No A/C, and boy did they need it. I really felt sorry for anyone near me as I needed a shower BAD by the time our flight to ICN left that night.
 
Ghery said:
And you taxi FOREVER at IWA. :D

Personally, the worst airline terminal I've sat in was Hanoi. No A/C, and boy did they need it. I really felt sorry for anyone near me as I needed a shower BAD by the time our flight to ICN left that night.
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Recently?

I was there in 2005, and it wasn't bad at all. In fact, a lot of the infrastructure around there was brand new, including, believe it or not, expressways.
 
Palmpilot said:
Pretty much any airport in Somalia! (Not that I've ever been there.)
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I have been there (well sort of) and I agree.

Three weeks ago I was in Hargeisa, Somaliland and yep… one of the most dismal airports I have been to. I was a passenger.
 
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GCA319 said:
Douglas, AZ (DGL). Unfortunately, my job has taken me there a few times and the place is a hole. The runway is in terrible condition, the border is 1,000 feet from the departure end of 21, and the pilots lounge is a single wide trailor with a shag rug and a chair with questionable stains on it (I typically spend 2 to 5 hours at destinations while the boss does his thing, so it's nice to spend that time somewhere atleast halfway decent)
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Yeah, Douglas has seen better days. I remember flying down there with my dad when I was a wee little one to visit relatives. That was in the late 70s. I remember it as a dust bowl then. My grandfather used to fly B-25s out of there in WWII.
 
Sedona, AZ. can be real bad if the wind is blowing.
 

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Blythe is a hole...nice long runway though.

Taylor (TTL) is another hole as well. Last time I was there, there were young kid toys scattered all over the ramp from kids playing there.
 
Odessa (Ukraine, not Texas).

Wild dogs in the terminal, farm tractor and haywagon transporting baggage, semi-truck and trailer takes you from the plane to the terminal. Quite an experience.

Edit: Photos attached.
 

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TheTraveler said:
Odessa (Ukraine, not Texas).

Wild dogs in the terminal, farm tractor and haywagon transporting baggage, semi-truck and trailer takes you from the plane to the terminal. Quite an experience.
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I was in Odessa, Ukraine circa 2004. Packs of feral dogs in the city everywhere there is open space - sort of like cows in India, but much less charming, to say the least. Decrepitude. Some buildings burned out by arson after the fall of the USSR are still burned out more than ten years later. Nicest hotel at the nearby seaside 'resort' town was said to be owned by a mobster - I stayed there and decided that the breakfast buffet attendant should be called 'comrade Nyet' because that's what he said whenever I asked for something. I don't recall the airport, though, but I'm sure it wasn't good, because nothing there was.
 
MAKG1 said:
Recently?

I was there in 2005, and it wasn't bad at all. In fact, a lot of the infrastructure around there was brand new, including, believe it or not, expressways.
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2007

No A/C that I could detect. And I had to sit in the main part of the terminal for hours as you couldn't check in until about 2-3 hours before flight time.

Another dump was St. Petersburg (Russia) in 2000. That terminal was nothing to brag about. And the boneyard? At least, that was my first impression, then I realized they were still flying those things domestically. No thanks!
 
Ghery said:
Another dump was St. Petersburg (Russia) in 2000.
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I thought that airport was okay when I was there around 2010. Maybe they renovated.

When I visited the Soviet Union in the late 80's, everything was different. For example, while at the airport, I had to sit in a special waiting room just for foreigners. The room was stocked with two kinds of English-language leaflets: some exclaiming how popular the Tupolev aircraft is in the USSR, and the others how awful the Ku Klux Klan is in the U.S.

This reading material mixture, aviation plus bitter commentary on society and politics, reminds me of PoA today, now that I think about it.
 
CONUS, I'll go with Yuma. At least with Blythe you're not under the false impression you're anywhere near civilization.

Globally, I'm thinking anything in Somalia is going to be at the bottom of the list.
 
Sells, AZ - E78

Some kind of dung all over the runway.

Nowhere to park

No services of any kind, but you can walk 1 mile to a roadside gas station.
 
Ghery said:
Another dump was St. Petersburg (Russia) in 2000. That terminal was nothing to brag about. And the boneyard? At least, that was my first impression, then I realized they were still flying those things domestically. No thanks!
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If you were at Pulkovo, the main international airport for the city, terminal 1 (domestic) is a dump, terminal 2 (international) is nicer than many other Russian airports.

The boneyard...yes, they still fly those even today throughout most countries of the former USSR. Here's a pic of the beauty that I got to fly on a while back departing Moscow Sheremetevo. What a joy that ride was. At least the pilots were kind enough to put out their cigarettes shortly after takeoff.
 

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