Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with airport

Anxyliotics for draconian drug laws in S E Asia?

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:06:02 -0800

Can I take my benzos in transit through KL international airport? I will be catching a connecting flight through Malaysia and want to know whether I will be able to bring prescription drugs safely. I am aware of arrests of drug smugglers who were just passing through Malaysian and Singaporean airports as well as the problems people such as Grooverider have experienced in similarly draconian countries such as Dubai. I also appreciate that, if in doubt, it's best not to take a risk.

Regardless, I want to know if there is a substantial difference between carrying illicit drugs and medicines through the airport. I have a flight connection at Malaysia and want to know whether am I actually allowed to bring my benzos with me. How risky actually is it? Will I need to bring a valid prescription or will that not help me. Or is it fine as long as I am bringing obviously legit medicine rather than unlabelled baggies of loose powder. For obvious reasons I'd rather avoid any run-in with the authorities but part of me has to believe that the drug laws are vaguely reasonable with respect to medicines.

Help me bring back my wifi!

COBRA! — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:15:02 -0800

I'm having wifi troubles with my MacBook, and the lack of connectivity for the weekend gave me the shakes. Help me before the withdrawal gets worse! The gist: WPA2 Personal network, running on a Netgear router. Been up for a while, played nice with my MacBook (running Snow Leopard) and my wife's XP laptop. Over the weekend, the router rebooted during the setup of a new Roku, and my MacBook abruptly dropped the network; since then, I haven't been able to reconnect, just getting the standard "There was an error trying to join the network [SSID]. Please try again later."

My wife's XP machine still connects with no trouble.

As nearly as I can tell, it seems like my laptop sees the network, but can't recognize it as WPA2 Personal; when I try to connect, the SSID shows up in my saved networks as WPA2 Enterprise. Editing one of the Enterprise instances to Personal with the correct login information doesn't help, nor does manually adding a new Personal instance.

Other things I have tried:

- rebooting the router (multiple times)
- deleting the keychain storing network passwords
- deleting the plist storing network prefs
- deleting and re-adding the entire Airport connection in my network prefs
- reinstalling and updating Snow Leopard (update done with the MacBook connected by ethernet)

Any thoughts/suggestions/ideas?

Why isn't there more theft at airport baggage claims?

lunchbox — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:31:34 -0800

Why isn't there more theft at airport baggage claims? At most airports I've been to, the baggage claims are openly accessible from the outside, and no verification/authentication is necessary to walk in the door, grab a suitcase from the conveyor belt, and walk right out. (I know some airports require people to show baggage check receipts, but most I've been to haven't.) What's more, valuable suitcases often sit around for long periods of time without being claimed, leaving thieves plenty of time. How does this baggage-claim system not implode from epidemic theft?

Wireless router that can connect to a printer and external hard drive?

Dasein — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:23:12 -0800

Please help me find a router to make my parents' lives easier. I am looking for a wireless router that will allow me to connect to a printer and an external hard drive via USB. It doesn’t need to be wireless N (G is fine), but if it’s N it needs to be dual-band. Other than the Apple Airport Extreme with a USB hub attached, what wireless routers can do this? The models from Linksys with Storage Link and D-Link with Shareport seem to be able to connect to either a printer or a USB drive, but not both simultaneously. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I'd like my parents to be able to wirelessly print and back up data to a RAID drive. They run Windows, and while I'll install Bonjour to run the Airport Extreme if necessary, I know they will be a little suspicious about the comptability of Apple products. If the Airport Extreme is the only way to do this, anything you could say that would allow me to reassure them that printing will be seamless with Bonjour would also be appreciated.

Excuse me, which tunnel leads to the secret UFO base?

rokusan — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:55:23 -0800

Bad connection might leave me stuck in DIA (DEN) for six hours. Help me find alien autopsies and other weirdness. Unless I can change it on the spot, I probably have a bad connection that looks like it will leave me idling in Denver International Airport for six plus hours next week. I've never done anything more than run between gates there before, so I really haven't spent any quality time there.

I know it's too far from the city to be useful for such a short squat, so I'm looking for ways to kill time within the terminals or very close by.

I understand from urban legend that this particular airport is chock-full of crazy-strange alien-masonic new world order conspiracy zombie camp weirdness in its architecture and art. That sounds fun. I have cameras, a sketchbook, and no fear. Where do I begin?

Any more pedestrian attractions (like exemplary food or shops) would also be welcome. One can only take so much Pizza Uno and Hudson's News, you know?

Any tips or pointers?

Need help setting up AirPort on my Mac

Joseppi — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:52:14 -0800

I'm trying to set up an AirPort on my Mac and I'm having some issues. It's asking for OS X 10.4 and I'm running 10.5 but it still doesn't work. Any clue as to why this is happening? I'm trying to set up an AirPort on my Mac and I'm having some issues. When I try and install the software I get a message that says, "You cannot install AirPort on this volume. The version of Mac OS X on this volume is not supported." It's asking for volume 10.4 and I'm on 10.5. This is beyond frustrating as this is supposed to be such a simple process. Does anyone know what my issue might be?

Flying out of the other Birmingham

SpringAquifer — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:10:44 -0800

Any good parking options for Birmingham's (Alabama, not England) airport? Hub-to-hub flights can get expensive, so it's often significantly cheaper (almost $100) for me to fly out of Birmingham rather than Atlanta. But this requires a bit of a drive, so the costs and savings begin to break even if I leave my car in Birmingham for too long. (Unless I take Amtrak or Greyhound, but those both require multiple bus and rail transfers just to get to and from the station in both cities.)

I've found Alabama Airport Parking, which offers parking for $9/day, as opposed to the $12/day they charge at the airport. But I don't really know Birmingham very well, and things in a city like that aren't always easily Googleable. Are there any other, cheaper (and safe, though again, I don't know Birmingham) options I might have missed?

How can I tell if someone is trying to hop onto my wireless signal?

invisible ink — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:46:16 -0800

I have a MacBook Pro running OS 10.6.1, and an Airport Extreme Base Station. Is there a user-friendly way to see if someone is trying to use my internet connection or hack into my network? I live in a large apartment building, and am curious to see if anyone has tried to hop onto my wireless signal. Thanks in advance:-)

No more wires please.

Jon-o — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:29:04 -0800

Apple AirPort Express wireless music question. I know iTunes has an option to play music via the speaker-output port on the AirPort Express base station. How do I route all of my computer's audio output through that?

Follow the yellow brick road!

Talia Devane — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:54:50 -0800

I need to find the most affordable flight from south Georgia to California. I seem to have too many variables though. How do I find the best flight from multiple possible departure airports to multiple possible arrival airports? Throw flexible dates in there as well just for fun. I live near the GA/FL border and can fly from Atlanta, Jacksonville, Tallahassee or the local commuter airport. I have family near San Diego and San Francisco. I'm going to have to rent a car in any case on the west coast so arrival can be to any airport within 2 hours or so driving. As this is still all planning phase I have no set dates. I just need the cheapest way to get there with two kids. Am I asking something impossible here?

Is there a regional airport that would make it easier for me to get to Red Bank, New Jersey

Dave. — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:16:15 -0800

Is there a regional airport that would make it easier for me to get to Red Bank, New Jersey as compared to going into the dreaded Newark Airport (EWR)? I know that Red Bank is only 30 miles south of Newark ... but for obvious reasons (flight delays, traffic, etc) I would like to avoid it. Unfortunately, I can't come up with a better alternative. Any thoughts appreciated, thanks!

And if it matters, this is a flight leaving 11/1 and returning 11/6 out of Jacksonville or Gainesville, FL.

How do I get from Berlin Schönefeld Airport to Alexanderplatz late at night?

maryrosecook — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:06:26 -0800

How do I get from Berlin Schönefeld Airport to Alexanderplatz late at night? As I understand it, direct trains from the airport to Alexanderplatz cease at 22.55. I will be arriving at the airport after that time. I have been told that it is possible to take the S-Bahn and then change onto a train that goes to Alexanderplatz. Is this possible? Is there a better way? My German is terrible, so the easiest/most-unfuckupable route is preferable.

How do very large car parks deal with abandoned cars?

cdenman — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:42:34 -0800

How do massive long-stay carparks (like those at airports), that have too many cars to keep track of individually, deal with the problem of cars that are never collected? I imagine it must happen - people park their cars in airports then disappear from the country. Not often but I don't think a couple of cars a year is an unreasonable guess.

How do these massive car parks deal with abandoned cars - do they ever know they're there?

In a small car park, a car parked in the same place for ages would be noticed after a short while, but in a car park that acts as a home for several thousand cars, surely the car just stays there for an eternity. Or is there some kind of checking procedure - and if so what is it!

Can you use airport amnesty bins to erase certain crimes?

Damn That Television — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:07:50 -0800

Where can I find the written laws that regulate amnesty bins at airports? (Amnesty bins are the bins right before the metal detectors in some airports where you can, according to signs, throw away anything that you can't take through security without penalty.) And, related, are these actually legally binding, or just a gentlemen's agreement? Could someone hypothetically put a stolen painting in the bin, and be free of legal consequence of having stolen it?

Denver in a Day

disillusioned — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 21:41:52 -0800

Boulder? Denver? Help me day-trip to Colorado *THIS* Saturday! So I snatched up an interesting offer: Frontier Airlines had PHX->DEN same-day roundtrip for $59, inclusive. (No add'tl taxes or fees, available ONLY for this Saturday, and only for an hour, at that!)

We arrive in DEN at 9:24am and we depart at 9:20pm.

We *may* have a ride from the airport, but what's the cheapest way to downtown Denver (or Boulder) if not? Where's best to land if we want to get around the city relatively easily once we do, assuming no car?

What's there to see and do for fun eating on a Saturday? Which would you recommend to make the best use of our time? We probably need to be back at the airport by 8:15 at the latest, so take that into account. (No checked bags, clearly.)

I like photography, museums, good food, fun art, cool people, markets, fairs, weird off-the-beaten path stuff, and anything else going. I'll have my brother in tow, who's also down for pretty much anything.

Help plan my one-day itinerary, and understand that very little is a bust for us; it was a $60 thing, so why not, right?

Thanks!

Help me get home!

Meg_Murry — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:53:52 -0800

Is it insane to plan to fly into Pittsburgh the day before the G-20 Summit starts? Currently I have travel plans that end with me flying into Pittsburgh Int'l Airport next Wednesday, supposedly the same day various world leaders are set to arrive. I can't find any specific information/warnings regarding actual road closures, etc. but do see warnings that these may occur and apparently public transportation will be significantly disrupted. I'll need to drive from the airport to Bloomfield.

I can't fly in earlier than Wednesday, but could possibly change my flight to Saturday or Sunday. Advice?

Apple Airport Extreme or Express?

invisible ink — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:13:34 -0800

What is the difference between an Apple Airport Express Base Station, and an Airport Extreme Base Station? I have a tiny 500-square foot apartment. All I want is to be able to surf the web wirelessly. Can I go with the cheaper Express Base Station? Why is one cheaper than the other (in other words, what can the Extreme do that the Express cannot)?

Because nobody likes airplane food

Diagonalize — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:05:03 -0800

What is the ideal food to welcome someone home with after a long flight, keeping potential delays and an long commute from the airport in mind? Bonus points for late-night Boston/Cambridge delivery recommendations! I'd love to have a super tasty meal waiting when my boyfriend gets back from Europe in a few days, but besides stew, does anything still taste good after sitting for several hours? Without a car, picking him up will take me at least a couple of hours round trip, so while I like cooking, I'd rather not have to, given all the time and stress unknowns.

He's expressed a strong interest in almost any manner of Asian food, so while I'd be more than happy to just pick up some Chinese or Thai, I'm worried that a late arrival on a Sunday night will seriously limit our options. He really does not want pizza, and eating at the airport seems...non-ideal. I thought about stashing some sushi in the fridge, but that seemed iffy with the timing. Are there any take-out/delivery options that lend themselves especially well to reheating/eating cold? We're near Harvard Square, if that helps any.

What's a good Vancouver hostel?

msbrauer — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 08:51:55 -0800

I need a place to stay in Vancouver on Sunday before a flight. What's a good and cheap hostel in Vancouver, Canada, close to easy transportation to the airport (i.e. the Quick Shuttle)?

SFO to Downtown after midnight

fx3000 — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 07:38:06 -0800

Getting from San Francisco Airport to Downtown SF after the BART stops running. I'm heading to San Francisco this week and will be arriving at SFO late, right around the time the BART stops running. I will need to get from the airport to close to Union Square (Grant Plaza Hotel, Grant Ave), possibly after midnight. I'm on a fairly tight budget so I'd like to avoid getting fleeced on a cab if possible. I have read a little bit about the airport shuttles and this seems like the way to go, but I tried http://www.shuttlefare.com and got a few "Pickup times are unavailable for your flight requirements." I would also like to avoid any shady services. Are there good, after midnight shuttle services? Or should I consider another option?

Where to find airport passenger data?

dunderwood — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:48:52 -0800

Looking for airport passenger data. More specifically, monthly deplaned (inbound) passenger data for Miami, Orlando and Tampa from 1975 to 2008. I've tried most government websites including the BTS as well as the airport sites themselves. Quarterly data is acceptable but yearly data is not. All I have been able to find so far is yearly data. Thanks in advance.

Finicky Airport Devices

fantasticninety — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:10:37 -0800

Airtunes filter – Why are my iTunes speakers connected via Airport sometimes not recognised? I'm running iTunes 7 on OSX 10.4.11 and whenever I load iTunes it randomly chooses which speakers connected remotely to find.

I have four sets of speakers, all via airports, and it's just random how many it finds.

I'd love to find a fix to this which avoids upgrading to Leopard or getting iTunes 8 or whatever it is now.

Thanks so much!

Help me connect!

scarylarry — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 16:02:01 -0800

Help me connect to my girlfriend's wireless network! My lovely girlfriend has a closed wireless network set up at her house (it requires a WPA2 Personal password to access and it's hidden from Airport's network scan). I have the network name and the password, and I've joined through Airport. I get full bars, but no actual internet connectivity whatsoever.

Neither my girlfriend nor I are particularly computer-savvy. We're not sure if maybe she needs to give my computer special permission from hers, or what. I don't know if this matters, but we both use Macbook Pros--she's running Leopard and I'm running Tiger.

Thanks so much.

JFK without US visa?

Meatbomb — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:48:01 -0800

Question about transit without US visa at JFK, and alternate options. My woman does not have time to get a US transit visa. We need to go to Mexico, from Europe. For cost reasons, we need to buy separate flights, e.g. Moscow - NYC return, and with another carrier NYC-Mexico City return.

She will only have carry-on luggage, if that helps. Is it possible for her to transfer like this at JFK without having to clear US customs?

(BONUS QUESTION: anyone know of cheap direct flights to-from Mexico City from Moscow, Istanbul, or similar?)

What to do with six hours in the Toronto airport?

angab — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:07:34 -0800

What should I do with a six-hour layover in Toronto? That's right - 6 hours. Just enough time to get really bored in the airport, and I'm not sure if it's enough time to get into the city center for a meal or a drink. Anyone who knows Toronto, please let me know what you think I should do with my extra hours. Also, please give information about the best method of transport into and out of the city.