The Perfect Airport
Posted on | January 20, 2010
I was traveling to London from Trieste today. The flight was delayed due to a malfunction on the plane and around 150 people had to wait for over 6 hours. To kill the time I decided to write this post, and share with you my views on what an airport must offer in order to make those six hours bearable or even enjoyable. This is not aimed just at Trieste’s Airport, other airports I have been to, are even worse. Some of the points apply to other public places such as caffes as well.
- Image by tomazstolfa via Flickr
Six hours are almost a full working day (or half for some), so if you had the right setup you could do a lot of work at the airport. What a “dreams come true”, work enabled airport needs or caffe:
Comfortable chairs
These aluminum chairs at airports are totally lousy if you have to sit on them for more than 15 minutes. There is absolutely no way to achieve a bearable, laptop friendly position on them. This makes productive work much harder as your back keeps reminding you that it is time for a walk - every 30 minutes.
Electrical plugs
As much as I love the long battery life of my current laptop it does not last forever. Recently I have been observing that there is a scarcity of electricity plugs everywhere I go, specially caffes and airports. A lot of people comes to those places to work, so why not ease them the pain and let them charge their devices while they are sipping their latte or waiting for their delayed flight. Please note that one wall socket just can not cover 50 chairs…
Having several types of wall sockets will make the travelers feel better, specially in big airports that are used for transfer flights a lot. For example: if I am traveling to the US via the UK from Slovenia I need to take with me two converters, while I would really need only one.
USB enabled wall sockets would be an additional plus, since more and more devices can be charged via USB.
So far we have been lucky and no on thought to charge for electricity like they do for Wi-Fi - I will discuss that further in the next paragraph.
Free Wi-Fi
This is the biggest issue. I regard internet access in the same way as I regard electricity. From my point of view these are really similar in many ways and should both be available for free at airports and public places. It should be free so people can carry on with their work while on the road, specially if they are stuck somewhere for more than a couple of minutes. Of course there are lounges and super-fast, super-expensive pay-as-you-go Wi-Fi hotspots, but those are usually priced insanely. To conclude - Wi-Fi should be free, not only on airports but also in hotels, hostels, hospitals, waiting rooms or any other place where people have to wait.
Clean toilets
A must. Sorry Trieste, but your toilets suck. Dirty and unpleasant.
These are all really small things that do not cost a fortune to implement (except for the comfy chairs), but would have a much greater effect for people stuck at airports due to delayed flights than the usual 5€ snack voucher. So please, please do it and make all life easier for all those poor souls sitting on aluminum chairs right now ;)
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January 24th, 2010 @ 18:57
1. Sitting prevents you from buying over-priced stuff. Why enable that.
2. Electritical plugs and wifi also.
3. Ok toilets are a problem
The fact that you didn't fly from Brnik means that you aren't willing to pay for such things like wifi to be part of the airport package.
January 24th, 2010 @ 19:09
This was a bit harsh. Just wanted to say that we have to figure out the new economy as we stop using old ways of generating money for these venues. It should be open and transparent way so everyone understands the economies behind it.
January 25th, 2010 @ 08:17
1 - because you want people to feel good?
2 - same as above
1 and 2 are mainly important because you remember a place mainly for the services you got while staying there.
I did not fly from Brnik, because the price difference was so huge that it did not make sense to fly from there in any economy.
January 25th, 2010 @ 08:18
And what I mainly wanted to say is that public places that regard us as their income source should start paying attention to peoples needs instead of only paying attention to their wallets.