Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with airport

Duty-free or savings-free?

smackfu — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:53:28 -0800

What's the truth behind duty-free shops? Are they always a bad deal? Or is there some stuff that's good to buy, and other stuff you should always avoid?

Houston International Airport Connections

hylaride — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:18:48 -0800

How is Houston International Airport for connecting international flights? I'm going to be travelling from Toronto to Mexico City via Houston. I'm flying Continental. Now I'm not particularly worried about flying to Mexico City, as there's a US customs in Pearson(Toronto). Coming back I'm curious if I'll have to re-check my bags in Houston when coming home (unless there's an american customs in MEX, I'm sure I will).

I ask because I've previously done many business trips from Curacao via Miami. Miami's disaster of an airport always made me have to take my bags and re-check them in even though I was in transit to Canada. I assume it's FAA requirements at all airports from flights arriving outside the US. But what's worse is that after going through customs there, you're supposed to leave your luggage in a huge pile that never make the connections and then bolt as fast as I can across the airport and barely make the next flight.

Am I in for the same experience in Houston? Is it at least a better Airport than Miami?

How do I navigate Newark Airport?

bluekrauss — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 09:21:43 -0800

How does one get from Terminal A to Terminal C (and back again) at Newark Airport? I'm flying Continental and have to change planes at Newark. Is it hard to navigate the place? How long will it take to get from terminal to terminal?

Car service from Heathrow to Central London

meerkatty — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:23:51 -0800

Heathrow to Central London. Which car service do you recommend? I'm always exhausted after transatlantic flights. Sick of the tube and Heathrow Express. Want someone with a sign to be at the arrival gate and drive me to SW3. Recommendations for reliability/decent price much appreciated.

Cheap parking near Philly airport?

jujube — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:35:56 -0800

cheap longterm parking at philadelphia airport? I know the Philadelphia International Airport has economy parking. But can anyone recommend other cheaper options for 10-day parking? It should be safe, and have convenient/frequent shuttlebus service to the airport.
Thanks.

Best routes back to my roots

emelenjr — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:39:12 -0800

New Yorkers, help a former New Yorker out! How impractical would it be to take a taxi from LaGuardia Airport in New York out to Locust Valley, NY, versus renting a car for the weekend (not this weekend—no holiday rush implied.) I'll be staying with family and there will be cars aplenty at the house where we'll be, but no one is going to be able to pick me up at the airport on the night I'll arrive. I'm guessing it will be cheaper to take the LIRR out instead of a taxi, but that would also require getting picked up at the station, not to mention getting from LaGuardia to the LIRR first.

Six hours in Vancouver airport

Artw — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:07:45 -0800

My brother is taking a cheap flight from England to visit us in Seattle, which has a stop in Vancouver (YVR) for six hours. Is there anything taht can be done within that time that's worth doing? Would it actually be possible to get out of the airport? Or should I just tell him to bring a book?

Solar Panels R Fun!

aetg — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:09:19 -0800

Do you have this backpack? Have you taken it through the TSA? What about the airports at Paris, Johannesburg, or Dakar?

For obvious reasons I want to use it as my carry-on bag, but I'm concerned that the additional cords and wires might caused it to get searched or seized.

Actually, I'm not so worried about the search as much as the seizing.

Any personal experiences or links to articles welcome. Random speculation would not be helpful in this case. Thanks in advance!

Cheap hotel/hostel near Brussels airport

soulbarn — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:30:08 -0800

My college-age niece (MEANING: broke, almost!) needs a cheap place to stay near the Brussels airport. She's going to be spending US dollars, so I know "cheap" is relative. She's an inexperienced traveler and a little timid. Any ideas?

You have been disconnected.

synecdoche — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:17:09 -0800

We're having some problems with our wireless network, and I can't figure out what the problem is. We're using a D-Link DI-524 Router, with the most up-to-date firmware, and are both running Macbooks, both with up-to-date versions of OSX.5. One of these (mine) was also having trouble with another router (an Inexq), too, but I don't want to go back to that anyway as it has little in the way of security.

On the D-Link, we have WPA2 security enabled on the router, SSID is being broadcast. Currently the channel is set to Auto Select, but I've also tried selecting one manually, as far away from all the other channels I can pick up with iStumbler as I can, and the problem persists. I've also tried setting the router to Mix Mode and to G-only. No difference.

The basic problem is that the connection gets cut quite frequently. Usually, the little Airport monitor won't register any disconnection; it still says full-strength. However, no websites are accessible, and accessing the router's configuration utility through the web browser (ie by going to the router's IP address) doesn't do much either. At this point, the connection can usually be restored by turning Airport off and turning it back on again. However, a few minutes later, another disconnection.

There doesn't seem to be, that I've noticed, any specific factor that is influencing when the disconnections occur. It happens running on battery and when the laptops are plugged in.

I'm starting to think that maybe I need to just get a new router, but before I do, I want to make sure I've tried everything.

(I've seen this and this, but nothing seems to help, and they are for an older version of OSX anyway.

Solution for ride from Chilliwack to Vancouver airport?

royalchinook — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:37:32 -0800

I live in Chilliwack in BC and find myself wanting to go to the Vancouver airport pretty frequently. I'm really interested in a shuttle service ala SuperShuttle that will take me to the airport and then home but have so far only found AirportLinkShuttle which hasn't worked out for me yet (I was the only rider last time I wanted to use them which means they charge double). Is there some solution for getting to the airport that doesn't include renting a car, or buying a second one? I'm open to car-pooling, public or private transportation - any help?

Scotland-a-go-go Land

santojulieta — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:08:12 -0800

Travel Slash Honeymoon Filter: Help us coordinate in-country travel options between London and Edinburgh. Based on previous recommendations, we've decided to do it up right one night of our honeymoon and stay at The Witchery in Edinburgh. This is going to be one night in the middle of a 9 day stay, so we're looking for the best options to minimize time wasted travelling.

Right now, our best option is to book an Easy Jet flight that takes about 1:30 and will only run us about $200. However, we'd have to travel to the airport from (what we assume will be) central London.

What would you recommend?

Here are the essential details:

1. We're booked at the Witchery for October 17th and will be returning on October 18th.

2. We're both 27, so we're too old to apply for the student travel program with Britrail. Looking at Britrail tickets, it seems that a flexipass is going to run us in the neighborhood of $600, which seems nonsense to me.

3. We have no problem with renting a car and driving, except that I have no concept of what gas will cost in Europe. And it appears, according to Google Maps, that the drive will take 8ish hours.

4. Taking a coach, cheap though it might be, seems terribly unromantic and a huge waste of time.

Rollin', rollin', rollin' on a suitcase.

mdonley — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:33:21 -0800

I am looking for two very specific things regarding my one-night layover in London this Wednesday/Thursday and my insanely heavy rolling suitcase. 1) A hostel with a lift/elevator (or all on one level!). I will have a huge rolling suitcase full of a year's worth of stuff and would prefer to not throw out my back hauling it up stairs.

Budget: £20-25 (less is fine); Zone 1 preferable, near Paddington Station or a Piccadilly Line station (with a lift/escalators!) perfect.

2) The path of least resistance (fewer/no stairs, more lifts/escalators!) to this hostel from Gatwick on Wednesday evening, and from this hostel to Heathrow T5 on a Thursday morning (my flight departs at 12:50, so I won't have to deal with an early morning scrum, hopefully). I'm happy to take buses/coaches, the Tube, overground trains, whatever, as long as I'm not paying, say, £10 more than I would or some alternate transport.

MetaHelp: I need your google-fu!

myodometer — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 14:55:00 -0800

Does Ricky Gervais have an opening act when he does his stand-up sets? My girlfriend was awesome enough to have bought me tickets to see Ricky Gervais on one of the two nights that he's going to be doing his new stand-up set in Los Angeles this summer. Unfortunately, we had already booked a flight to the east coast for that same night, scheduled to leave at 11:55PM.

His show is listed as starting at 7:30, and I'm assuming that the fun likely won't be starting until at least 8 - but does anyone know if he has an opening act before he comes on? I've been scouring Google and can't seem to find an answer.

Worst case, I'll just rebook my flight for the next morning.

Help me fly the vegan skies

amtho — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:38:38 -0800

Vegan airport/airline dining - connect and lunch in Dallas (DFO) or Chicago (ORD)? Somewhere else? How long to allow for a connection to assure we can eat at the restaurant you recommend? We're traveling from Raleigh-Durham to San Francisco and it's looking kind of grim for in-flight meals; it's > 7 hours overall travel time but broken into two segments; best advice for not-having-to-pack-lunch? I can't tell if the (currently American Airlines) flights that I'm looking at offer a meal - everything involves a connection, so the individual flights may not be long enough. There's an icon of a dollar sign + knife + fork; I'm guessing that means I can purchase a snack/meal, but none of the purchasable options look even vaguely vegetarian.

The Continental flights I've seen offer no meals. Anybody know of a way to get a vegetarian/vegan meal in the air between Raleigh and San Francisco?

I'd really like to not have to carry food with me and pasta/bread/crackers will not give me the energy I want for starting our trip!

Any advice on dining in airports on the way? I'm currently looking at flights that connect through Dallas (DFW) or Chicago O'Hare (ORD), but if you know of a good food airport en route between Raleigh and San Francisco, please let me know.

I found restaurant listings for ORD - didn't look good. The Dallas airport looked like it might be slightly better, but the listing is broken up into four or five different terminals and nothing leapt out at me.

tips for navigating the myriad harbor

mezamashii — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:35:33 -0800

What's the simplest way to get from Sea-Tac airport to 1st/Seneca in downtown Seattle? I'm flying into Sea-Tac tomorrow evening, and have to pick up apartment keys at Harbor Steps (between Seneca and University). What's the easiest/cheapest way to make this trip? Taxi is basically out of the question. I saw that the metro RT 194/174 from the airport stops at university/4th, but not sure how doable this is with luggage or how crowded the bus may be.

Secondly... After I pick up my keys, I have to go down to 2400 4th Ave, which seems like quite a hike. Should I just suck it up and get a taxi for this leg, or is there some neat transit-fu I can do to hop down a dozen blocks?

AirPort Express for XBox 360?

cosmic osmo — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:05:23 -0800

What's the best option for getting an XBox 360 online--the official wireless adapter from Microsoft or an Apple Airport Express? I'll be playing Live and streaming videos and music from my computer to the 360, and my router is an Airport Extreme (802.11n). Does the Express' n capability make a difference in performance at all, in terms of lag/speed? Is this setup really as difficult as my googling would suggest? (And a bonus question--what's better, Rivet or Connect360?)

Help me help my baby.

unclejeffy — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:23:28 -0800

My wife's stuck in the Atlanta airport due to a missed flight (weather-related) and now the airport's closed (weather-related). Looks like she won't get a flight here to Tampa until 7:00 am. I hate that she's going to have such a miserable night. What can I do to make her more comfortable? We've been texting, and I've given her some information about available lounges, etc., but what else can I do? Delta is apparently not being very helpful and doesn't seem to care about her or her fellow passengers. Thanks for your ideas.

How can I pass through airport security without them X-Raying all of my camera film?

stackhaus23 — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:24:39 -0800

How can I pass through airport security without having my camera film X-Rayed? I've flown a bunch of times with camera film and although I've never had any problems, the batch of film I just bought (lots of Fuji 100 medium format print film) specifically reads on the side DO NOT X-RAY.

I'm flying from the UK to San Francisco and back again so the idea of ruining all the film from my trip is heartbreaking. What do I do?

I can't relax about LAX!! Help with Terminal 7.

jeanmari — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 15:05:07 -0800

What would be the best place to pick up a group arriving at the United Terminal (Terminal 7) at LAX? A handful of people on different United flights are arriving at LAX's Terminal 7. One other person will be picking them all up. She needs to tell them:

a) where to meet up with each other,

b) where to go to meet her van.

Does anyone with more familiarity with LAX than I do have any suggestions for A and B?

We've searched online for maps of Terminal 7 but it is difficult to find specifics around baggage claim and such (like "meet under the sign that says Such and Such and then meet the van at the door closest to Traveler's Aid").

Airport Employee Security

ryecatcher — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 01:11:29 -0800

What kind of security do airport workers have to undergo when they show up for work? If you want me to be specific, I'm more curious about those who work on the outside (like runways and tarmacs) than those who work on the inside.

Thanks a lot.

"Don't hang up, let me cut our internet..."

blueberry — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:14:12 -0800

Our wireless internet and our cordless phone(s) hate each other with the unbridled passion of a thousand suns. Hi. My house-mate and I here in Portland get our telephone and internet service through Qwest.

We have DSL
(MenuMeters tells me that our maximum download rate seems to be about 170KB/s).

The internet info comes to us over the same line as the phone. Qwest provides us with an "Actiontec DSL modem with wireless gateway" (model #GT701-WG). We plug the phone line from the wall into the modem, and then plug our cordless phone into the modem. The idea being that the wireless modem will take the internet stuff and broadcast it out to our Mac and Windows laptops, while routing the telephone stuff to our phone.

Here's the problem: if we are doing anything with the internet
(loading a web page, downloading podcasts, uploading photos to Flickr)
the phone starts dropping out. And the more internet activity, the worse the problem—if you're talking to someone, you can hear them but they only hear every other word you're saying.

So it seems that the wireless modem signal is interrupting the 2.4 GHz's cordless phone's signal. (yet, interestingly, it only seems to affect our side of the conversation; we can hear the other person fine and if someone leaves us a message on the cordless phone's digital answering machine we get the whole message even if we're downloading a bunch of podcasts)

• We have tried switching the channels that our wireless modem broadcasts to, but that hasn't helped.

• We've plugged in a "splitter" and it has had no effect.

• Yesterday we tried a new 5.8 GHz cordless phone—one touted as having no problems with wireless internet—and it has the same exact problem. A PDF I found online [link to PDF] states the Actiontec GT701-WG "operates on a 2.4GHz frequency, similar to many cordless phones" Which puzzles me as to why we'd have the same problem when we tried a 5.8 GHz phone...

• we have also tried cursing profusely, to little effect

My question is this:

Is it possible that the Qwest-provided Actiontec GT701-WG is the weak link and that more recent routers might be more cordless-phone-friendly? My thinking is that if two different phones* and switching router channels hasn't worked, the only constant in the problem is the router itself.

I was thinking maybe we could just pick up an Airport or something, go back to our old reliable phone (a Panasonic LX-TG2431) and have better luck.

As a side question, any Qwest users out there who have done this? I just want to make sure that Qwest doesn't have some quirk that requires using the Actiontec unit.

* The two phones that we have used that have both had the problem:
- a Panasonic LX-TG2431 "2.4 GHz Gigarange"
- a 5.8 GHz phone from Radio Shack (model number 43-138)

5 Hours in Phoenix

rmless — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:44:44 -0800

What to do in Phoenix for 5 hours? I have a 5 hour layover in Phoenix, AZ on Monday from 5 pm to 10 pm.

Is this enough time/worth it to leave the airport and do something in town?

What should I see that is open after 5?

About how much would a taxi cost from the airport into the city?

Is there anything to do in the airport itself?

3 Hour Tour of San Fran

lilkeith07 — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:43:07 -0800

My parents are going to Hawaii for their 25th wedding anniversary. They have a 3 hour layover in San Fransisco. They are going to be getting in around 1ish. The question is do they have time to get out of the airport and see anything in San Fransisco and still make their flight? My parents have already seen the Golden Gate Bridge so thats not really high up on their list but is there anything else they can see in that time span?

How do I make my WiFi network stop hiding from me?

logovisual — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 07:45:23 -0800

I cannot maintain a connection to my wireless network. I think it might have something to do with the EIGHTEEN other wireless networks available around me. What can I do? (And let's knock this one out early: I'm on a completely different channel from all the other networks). I just moved to a new apartment in Astoria, Queens, and was having trouble getting onto the new roommates' wireless network (and learned that one of the other roommates, a fellow Mac user, couldn't get on it either). So I bought a new Airport Extreme and set it up yesterday in place of the old Linksys router. This took HOURS, because I couldn't get a signal in the next room (where my computer is) strong enough to maintain a connection to the base station for long enough to go through the entire setup process. I eventually got it up and working, but ever since, I'm lucky to get 20 minutes of internet access before my iMac drops the connection to the network.

Here are the gory details: The network is on channel 1. The eighteen (no joke) networks around us are all on channels 6, 8, or 11. When I run MacStumbler, our network consistently has the strongest signal strength -- around 70, compared to the other networks in the 40s or 50s -- but it also appears very infrequently, only poking its head above the fray of competing networks once every couple of minutes. A couple of networks with weaker signal are much more consistent, almost never disappearing from MacStumbler's view. Ours, apparently, likes to play hide-and-seek.

The Airport Extreme (one of the brand new 802.11n ones) has to be set up in my roommate's bedroom, since he's on a paleocomputer without WiFi and must be jacked into it. The distance from the router to my computer is maybe fifteen to twenty feet total, with a closet and wall in between. The closet does have some metal fixtures (rods and hangers), but is mainly wood and fabric.

My computer is a 20" iMac G5. I have my doubts about its WiFi antenna to begin with, since I also have an Airport Express (which is not currently on the network, since I can't hold a signal long enough to get it rebooted and connected onto the network, otherwise I'd use it to improve my signal strength) which I tried plugging into the power outlet DIRECTLY BELOW my computer, and the iMac only registered a signal strength of about 80.

I also have a Powerbook G4 which I wandered around the house testing signal strength with; I tried setting the Powerbook literally on top of the Airport Extreme, and got the same problem wherein the signal was exceptionally good -- 116 -- but only when it appeared, which was once every couple of minutes. Then it vanished.

So: what are my options? Is there something I can do to make the network consistent, and not be playing this "I'm here, I'm not here" game? Is this likely to be a placement problem for the router, or more likely to be an antenna problem with my computer?