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Travel

Stories of airline hell: The 10 worst airports in the world

John Metcalfe, The Mercury News
26/10/2026 08:00:00

Each month seems to see a new list of terrible airports. But few get as entertainingly into the problems as The Telegraph’s “10 of the world’s worst airports, according to frequent flyers.”

The British newspaper asked its travel journalists to dredge their repressed memories for stories of travel hell. What emerged is a list of airports to avoid like the plague, perhaps even if it means changing your flight plans.

For one Greek airport, a writer recalls, “The crowd scene inside the small terminal was so biblical that the check-in area could surely have been reassigned as one of the levels in Dante’s depiction of hell (Fifth Circle: warm, angry tourists).”

In Moscow, another journalist was dismayed to see all the plane’s luggage unloaded on the tarmac in the driving snow. A random passenger “forced a security door — setting off all the alarms — and then he and other passengers formed a human chain to shift the luggage indoors. Boeing 747s were taxiing past as we shifted the icy bags into the terminal.”

It almost makes the old Spirit Airlines look good by comparison.

The Telegraph’s 10 worst airports in the world

1 Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport, France

2 Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow

3 Tivat Airport, Montenegro

4 Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Nigeria

5 Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi

6 Santorini Airport, Greece

7 Miami International Airport, Florida

8 Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Netherlands

9 Changi Airport, Singapore

10 Istanbul Airport, Turkey

Source: The Telegraph

by The Mercury News