Airports: Making Connections

With a lot of visitors to the countries that In Your Pocket covers coming from regions outside Europe, and with a lot of expats now living in such countries and wanting to take holidays without going anywhere near London, Paris or Frankfurt, I found this article in the New York Times quite interesting. It identifies some handy air traffic hubs that are not Heathrow-horrible de Gaulle appalling or Frankfurt-%&*@ed.

Europe's Best Airport

Baia Mare airport in the north of Romania is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the world's busiest. One small plane from Bucharest lands each night at 10pm; it leaves for the Romanian capital again at 6am the next morning. That's it.

As a result, the staff have plenty of time on their hands. This could in most cases lead to negligence of duty, laziness, or worse. Not at Baia Mare.

In fact, given the level of personal service, I have decided to rate it Europe's best airport. I mean, where else do airport security staff look after your baby daughter while you pop off for a coffee? Where else do you receive hand written boarding passes?

Where else is your luggage carried to the plane by friendly, joking baggage handlers?

All airports should be like this.

Vilnius: Airport to city travel delays

A bridge in the main road that links Vilnius airport and the city centre will be closed from June 1. It's expected that travelling between the airport and the city will take twice as long as it previously did. It's also going to roughly double the cost of a cab to or from the airport. Keep it in mind if you have a plane to catch.

Bucharest Baneasa Airport to Close

Europe's worst airport, Bucharest Baneasa, is finally going to get a face lift. Planes due to take off from and land at Baneasa (mainly those of budget airlines) will be using Bucharest Otopeni during the closure.

It is rumoured in travel industry circles that improvements to Baneasa have come at the request of easyJet, who want to begin services there but have refused to do so with the airport currently creaking under the strain of handling oh, at least 12 flights a day.