Airports I’ve used
Last Friday set an ignominious personal milestone: I broke a record for consecutive days spent away from airplanes that went back to to 2001.
Back then, the post-9/11 shutdown of commercial aviation and my own relaxed travel schedule ensured I wouldn’t board a plane between early August, when I landed at National Airport after a summer vacation in California, and early January, when I took off DCA for my first Macworld Expo. This time, the novel-coronavirus pandemic has grounded me, and it’s unclear when I’ll once again feel jet engines shove me back in my seat and watch the ground fall away from the wing.
So I might as well document the airports I used in the Before Times, having already done the research for my friend Craig Fifer’s Flight Quest project to track who among his friends had taken off from or landed at more airports. As an inveterate list-maker and avgeek, how could I not have taken part in that competition?
So here you go: the 94 95 97 98 99 100 101 102103 104 105 106 109 112 113 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 airports I’ve used listed by IATA and ICAO code, plus my comments about each.
- AER/URSS, Sochi International Airport: A student trip to the Soviet Union after my high-school graduation (thanks, Mom and Dad) led me to this airport on the Black Sea.
- AMS/EHAM, Amsterdam Airport Schiphol: A friend’s bachelor party provided an excellent excuse to fly to the Netherlands.
- ATL/KATL, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport: I’ve spent shockingly little time here, aside from two trips to cover the E3 video-game conference in the ’90s.
- ATW/KATW, Appleton International Airport: This has to be the smallest U.S. airport on this list with “International” in its name–despite not having any regularly scheduled international passenger service.
- AUS/KAUS, Austin–Bergstrom International Airport: Thanks, SXSW.
- BCN/LEBL, Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat Airport: MWC put this airport on my map.
- BDA/TXKF, L.F. Wade International Airport: spring break in Bermuda with my family in high school.
- BER/EDDB, Berlin Brandenburg Airport: Five years after seeing this unopened airport as a infrastructure tourist, I experienced it as a passenger.
- BNA/KBNA, Nashville International Airport: The diversity of local dining options represented here reminded me of AUS.
- BOI/KBOI, Boise Airport: Shortest airport name on this list.
- BOS/KBOS, Logan International Airport: a family destination since the late ’90s.
- BRU/EBBR, Brussels Airport: I hear Brussels is a great city, so at some point I should not just connect through its airport.
- BUR/KBUR, Hollywood Burbank Airport: Among my easier airport car-rental experiences.
- BWI/KBWI, Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport: the greater Washington area’s third-place airport.
- CDG/LFPG, Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport: T1 is a master class in how not to design a terminal.
- CGS/KCGS, College Park Airport: I went to an airshow at the oldest continuously-operated airport in the late ’90s and paid $20 or so for a ride in a biplane.
- CLE/KCLE, Cleveland Hopkins International Airport: I’m told that my first flight was a hop from Newark to Cleveland to see my grandparents.
- CLT/KCLT, Charlotte Douglas International Airport: Yes, I’ve flown US Airways and American Airlines.
- CMH/KCMH, John Glenn Columbus International Airport: Part of a miniature mileage run I did on Sept. 11, 2020 to break an eight-month streak of being grounded after the novel-coronavirus pandemic shut down all my business travel.
- CPH/EKCH, Copenhagen Airport: The airport is easily reachable by train from both Denmark and Sweden.
- CRL/EBCI, Brussels South Charleroi Airport: Potential Ryanair passengers should be advised that Charleroi isn’t Brussels.
- CTU/ZUUU, Chengdu Shuangliu International Airport: The 1998 trip to Tibet that took me through this airport (I’m sure it’s much fancier now) will require its own post at some point.
- CUN/MMUN, Cancún International Airport: a pre-Christmas vacation a couple of years ago.
- DAL/KDAL, Dallas Love Field: Of course, Southwest Airlines was involved.
- DCA/KDCA, Washington National Airport: I don’t call the airport that I’ve probably used more than any other “Reagan Airport” because Republicans in Congress insisted on shoving that name on us while the 41st president was still alive. Never name things after living politicians.
- DEN/KDEN, Stapleton International Airport: I’m so old that I’ve flown in and out of and driven under Denver’s former airport.
- DEN/KDEN, Denver International Airport: Rail transit from here is surprisingly good.
- DFW/KDFW, Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport: I think I’ve only flown here once; my second time would have been this March, but the pandemic intervened.
- DOH/OTHH, Hamad International Airport: Doha, Qatar, is the farthest east I’ve flown from home.
- DTW/KDTW, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport: I’ve only over connected through Detroit and have somehow never visited the city itself.
- DUB/EIDW, Dublin Airport: I was overdue to return until Dublin Tech Summit brought me back in 2022.
- EWR/KEWR, Newark Liberty International Airport: my home airport growing up, as well as the only one where I’ve experienced a departure from the jumpseat of an airliner.
- FCO/LIRF, Rome–Fiumicino International Airport: first stop on my honeymoon.
- FLL/KFLL, Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International Airport: a nice start to a few days in the Florida Keys with friends.
- FRA/EDDF, Frankfurt am Main Airport: Germany’s biggest Star Alliance transfer point.
- FUK/RJFF, Fukuoka Airport: an unplanned connection on my way to Tokyo in 2019, also a source of childish hilarity for its IATA code.
- GIG/SBGL, Rio de Janeiro/Galeão International Airport: My first airport used out of the Northern Hemisphere.
- GRU/SBGR, São Paulo/Guarulhos International Airport: I usually don’t like to be introduced to a new airport with less than two hours to connect through it, but my domestic-to-international connection at GRU was about as easy as they get.
- GVA/LSGG, Geneva Airport: Switzerland’s lesser airport.
- HEL/EFHK, Helsinki-Vantaa Airport: Also one of the more memorable IATA codes out there.
- HGR/KHGR, Hagerstown Regional Airport: Where I flew in a 76-year-old B-25 Mitchell.
- HKG/VHHH, Hong Kong International Airport: I’m sorry I never got to fly into Kai Tak.
- HND/RJTT, Tokyo International Airport: My belated introduction to Haneda came in 2019.
- HOU/KHOU, William P. Hobby Airport: This requires a whole lot less walking than its big brother on the other side of Houston.
- IAD/KIAD, Washington Dulles International Airport: my other home airport now.
- IAH/KIAH, George Bush Intercontinental Airport: so many connections here.
- IST/LTFM, Istanbul Airport: This has to be the largest airport terminal I’ve ever set foot in. If you have access to the Turkish Airlines lounge by the D concourse, show up hungry!
- JFK/KJFK, John F. Kennedy International Airport: I have a Pan Am boarding pass from here but have otherwise spent shockingly little time at JFK.
- KEF/BIKF, Keflavik International Airport: Decades after Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising” introduced this airport to me as the site of a Soviet invasion, I had a much more tranquil welcome connecting through KEF in 2022.
- KOA/PHKO, Ellison Onizuka Kona International Airport at Keāhole: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Tech Summit took me here in 2021.
- -/KHES, Healdsburg Municipal Airport: A flight in a friend’s plane took me to this tiny Sonoma County airstrip.
- LAS/KLAS, McCarran International Airport: CES has given me an obnoxious level of familiarity with Las Vegas’ airport.
- LAX/KLAX, Los Angeles International Airport: The In-n-Out Burger franchise just northeast of the runways is my favorite fast-food spot in the world.
- LED/ULLI, Pulkovo Airport: I flew here in 1989, when St. Petersburg was still Leningrad.
- LGA/KLGA, LaGuardia Airport: It’s made Penn Station look good.
- LGW/LGKK, London Gatwick: London’s other airport, substantially more expensive to reach via rail than Heathrow.
- LHR/EGLL, Heathrow Airport: My opinion of it went way up after T2 opened.
- LIS/LPPT, Humberto Delgado Airport: Obrigado, Web Summit.
- LKE/-, Kenmore Air Harbor Seaplane Base: My only flight to date that started and ended on water happened here, at Seattle’s Lake Union.
- LXA/ZULS, Lhasa Gonggar Airport: At 11,710 feet above sea level, Tibet’s primary airport is the highest one I’ve used.
- MAD/LEMD, Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport: I was here as a kid.
- MCI/KMCI, Kansas City International Airport: Not everything is up to date in this airport.
- MCO/KMCO, Orlando International Airport: I’ve flown here to see rockets fly.
- MDW/KMDW, Chicago Midway International Airport: the other Chicago airport.
- MEM/KMEM, Memphis International Airport: a long-ago connection.
- MEX/MMMX, Mexico City International Airport: my first non-coastal airport used in Mexico.
- MHT/KMHT, Manchester–Boston Regional Airport: An early-morning departure after a friend’s wedding was not much fun.
- MIA/KMIA, Miami International Airport: My first in-person panel moderation since the start of the pandemic finally got me to this airport.
- MSO/KMSO, Missoula Montana Airport: After getting off the plane here, I knew I would not have Vasili Borodin’s dying regret in the film version of The Hunt For Red October, “I would like to have seen Montana.”
- MSP/KMSP, Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport: My 2001 connection here was so short that my skis didn’t make it on the plane home with me.
- MSY/KMSY, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport: great city, bad transfers to and from its airport.
- MUC/EDDM, Munich Airport: my second-most-frequent connection in Germany.
- MXP/LIMC, Milan Malpensa Airport: The last stop on our honeymoon.
- NRT/RJAA, Narita International Airport: I don’t think any other airport on this list sits as far from its city’s downtown as Narita is from Tokyo.
- OAK/KOAK, Oakland International Airport: I last flew here when you still had to take a bus to BART.
- ODS/UKOO, Odesa International Airport: It was still spelled Odessa when I visited in 1989.
- OGG/PHOG, Kahului Airport: A friend’s wedding in Maui was for years my only visit to Hawaii.
- ORD/KORD, O’Hare International Airport: Two great things about ORD: the neon sculpture between T1’s two halves, and Tortas Frontera.
- ORY/LFPO, Paris Orly Airport: When my family lived outside of Paris during my first two years of college, flying Continental meant I arrived at Orly instead of de Gaulle.
- PDX/KPDX, Portland International Airport: I, too, miss the old carpet.
- PEK/ZBAA, Beijing Capital International Airport: Transit connections were not that easy or discoverable in 2007.
- PHL/KPHL, Philadelphia International Airport: Amtrak should connect to PHL.
- PHX/KPHX, Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport: Yet another airport I’ve only used as a connection.
- PIT/KPIT, Pittsburgh International Airport: I haven’t been here since the last millennium.
- PSP/KPSP, Palm Springs International Airport: palm trees and runways.
- PTY/MPTO, Tocumen International Airport: I connected through Copa Airlines’ Panama City hub on my way to Web Summit Rio in 2023.
- PUJ/MDPC, Punta Cana International Airport: Wearing a Nats cap in the Dominican Republic will get you some “Juan Soto!” shout-outs.
- PVD/KPVD, T.F. Green International Airport: Providence has a very efficient airport.
- PVG/ZSPD, Shanghai Pudong International Airport: the fastest transit link I’ve ever used.
- PVR/MMPR, Licenciado Gustavo Díaz Ordaz International Airport: a destination wedding in Puerto Vallarta.
- RDU/KRDU, Raleigh-Durham International Airport: Part of a mileage run in 2023, unless I flew in or out of there years earlier.
- RIX/EVRA, Riga International Airport: The TechChill conference brought me to Latvia in 2022.
- RNO/KRNO, Reno–Tahoe International Airport: My only flight here happened after I missed a flight out of IAD and had to rebook.
- RSW/KRSW, Southwest Florida International Airport: I forgot to include Fort Myers’ airport when I first posted this list.
- SAN/KSAN, San Diego International Airport: Enjoy the views of downtown on the way in.
- SAT/KSAT, San Antonio International Airport: the smallest United Club I’ve visited.
- SDU/SBRJ, Santos Dumont Airport: Rio’s rough equivalent of National Airport.
- SEA/KSEA, Seattle–Tacoma International Airport: Take the train to downtown and think of Steve Dunne from Singles.
- SFO/KSFO, San Francisco International Airport: my most frequent Left Coast airport.
- SJC/KSJC, San Jose International Airport: I haven’t been back to Silicon Valley’s self-styled home airport in a few years.
- SJD/MMSD, Los Cabos International Airport: another destination wedding in Mexico.
- SJU/TJSJ, Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport: Storms back home extended my senior-year spring-break trip to Puerto Rico by a day and got me rebooked into a first-class seat on American back to D.C.
- SLC/KSLC, Salt Lake City International Airport: a great ski trip in my pre-parenthood days.
- SMF/KSMF, Sacramento International Airport: I flew here in 1992 to drive across the country with my girlfriend at the time in a 1977 Toyota Corolla, which seemed like a super-logical thing to do at the time.
- SNA/KSNA, John Wayne Airport: The takeoff from this short 5,700-foot runway felt sportier than average.
- SPU/LDSP, Split Airport: My introduction to Croatia in 2023, courtesy of Infobip’s Shift 2023 conferencee hosting me as an emcee.
- STL/KSTL, St. Louis Lambert International Airport: my first two business trips had me going to E3 in L.A. via TWA from DCA, putting that airline’s hub in between.
- STS/KSTS, Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport: The tiny waiting room is decorated with large prints of Peanuts strips featuring Snoopy and the Red Baron, which is awesome. Santa Rosa’s airport is also the only one I’ve departed via hot-air balloon.
- SVO/UUEE, Sheremetyevo International Airport: My introduction to the joys of communism came at the start of that 1989 trip, in the form of an approximately two-hour wait after landing in Moscow for Aeroflot to return our group’s luggage.
- SVQ/LEZL, Seville Airport: Having ATC delay a departure to FRA last spring by most of an hour required me to make a 10-minute connection in FRA.
- SZX/ZGSZ, Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport: This, too, looks a lot different than it did during my 1998 trip to China.
- TLL/EETN, Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport: Estonia’s primary airport is refreshingly close to the center of Tallinn.
- TLV/LLBG, Ben Gurion Airport: They don’t screw around with security at Tel Aviv.
- TPA/KTPA, Tampa International Airport: I landed here in 2011 to see my first space shuttle launch because Continental couldn’t get me to Orlando; fortunately, I-4 was devoid of traffic after 11 p.m.
- TUS/KTUS, Tucson International Airport: Having an Air National Guard base hosted at this airport allows your planespotting to include F-16s.
- TXL/EDDT, Berlin Tegel Airport: If Berlin Brandenburg Airport really and finally opens this fall (update: it did), TXL will be the next airport on this list to be retired.
- VIE/LOWW, Vienna International Airport: a lovely vacation in 2006.
- VNO/EYVI, Vilnius International Airport: I got my introduction to the last of the Baltic states’ three major airports about two and a half years after landing in Tallinn.
- YQX/CYQX, Gander International Airport: On our way to the USSR in 1989, our Aeroflot Il-62 made a scheduled refueling stop at this Newfoundland airport.
- YTZ/CYTZ, Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport: one of only two airports that I’ve exited by walking, the other being National.
- YUL/CYUL, Montréal–Trudeau International Airport: Montréal is high on my list of cities I’d like to see again.
- YVR/CYVR, Vancouver International Airport: I flew here to spend a few days skiiing at Whistler and still need to spend some time in the city itself.
- YYZ/CYYZ, Toronto Pearson International Airport: famous forever thanks to Rush.
- ZAG/LDZA, Zagreb Franjo Tuđman Airport: One of the smallest national-capital airports on this list.
- ZRH/LSZH, Zurich Airport: The 22-minute connection I pulled off here in 2013 remains my second-shortest international layover.
This almost certainly isn’t complete, as before 1997 I’m limited to incomplete paper records and my own memory. But I don’t think anybody can question my lifelong effort to prop up commercial aviation.
Updated 9/12/2020 to add CMH; 10/7/2020 to add DAL and HOU; 8/20/2021 to add TLL; 8/27/2021 to add RSW; 9/16/2021 to add HGR; 10/3/2021 to add MIA;12/6/2021 to add KOA; 5/2/2022 to add RIX; 5/26/2022 to add BOI; 7/2/2022 to add HEL; 8/1/2022 to add PUJ; 9/19/2022 to add BER, KEF and CPH; 5/8/2023 to add PTY, GIG and GRU; 7/20/2023 to add LGW; 9/23/2023 to add IST, SPU and ZAG; 12/5/2023 to add RDU; 2/11/2024 to add VNO; 7/2/2024 to add SNA; 8/16/2024 to add BUR; 10/16/2024 to add BNA; 3/16/2025 to add DOH; 5/2/2025 to add SDU; 6/20/2025 to add MEX; 10/16/2025 to add ATW and update the name of MSO.
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