6. Los Angeles International Airport
- Opened: 1929 (first established), 1961 (new terminal buildings began replacing originals)
- Annual passengers: 70.6 million
- Delayed flights: 21% arrivals, 19.6% departures
- When LAX was designed, Los Angeles wasn't the sprawling, smog-choked megalopolis we all know and love today. Which means that when it was first planned 80 years ago, that area was nothing but wheat and barley fields and not the "prime ocean-adjacent real estate” it is now. But that doesn't mean it isn't still a massive and complete clusterfuck to navigate. Renting a car once you land? Allow at least an hour of travel time just to shuttle to the car rental facilities. And if you have to pick up or drop someone off? HAHAHAHAHAHA welcome to the double-decker horseshoe of hell, the most miserable microcosm of LA traffic you never hoped for. Real friends take cabs and don't ask to be dropped off/picked up, FYI.
- Opened: 1963
- Annual passengers: 42.9 million
- Delayed flights: 17.9% arrivals, 20.4% departures
- At McCarran -- the Las Vegas airport that is literally across the street from the MGM Grand Casino but will still cost you $18 in cab fare to get there -- you will have a very, very different experience depending on which terminal you're traveling through. The shiny new Terminal 3: no problem, assuming you can navigate the different levels to get to check-in without getting caught in a vicious loop of escalators to nowhere. (The signage is a bit... misleading.) But Terminal 1? If you're condemned to fly out of gates C 1-8, just know that you will walk about one full mile down a crowded hallway congested with slot machines and the world's worst tourists, and every last square inch of it is carpeted, which means it was designed by someone who never once walked a roller bag down a mile-long hallway. There are also smoking lounges and lots and lots and lots of slots. Welcome to Vegas.
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