Left luggage/baggage storage at airports.

[randomness]

Adding to the list of facilities all major airports should have is a left luggage office. This is one of those services that in many places has been discontinued in the name of "security". Given that airports like London Gatwick and Lima Jorge Chávez have managed to keep their baggage storage offices running in the face of rather extreme terrorist threat--the ones at Gatwick have luggage scanners to make sure you're not trying to store explosives or something--I wonder about the "security" excuse.

Left luggage, showers, sleep cubicles...there are probably lots of other features I'm forgetting that would be really useful to have at an airport. I mean, aside from the basic services airports generally do provide.

Any features you'd like to see at an airport?

Comments

[rikibeth]

Seats that aren't hard plastic. I have to admit I love the power outlets and USB charging stations. FREE wifi.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Craft stores inside airport security, so if you have a 3h layover you can learn a new craft. Or any kind of skill-building thing, frankly.

Spas are nice to have, I enjoyed my 4-hour layover getting a mani/pedi in the Panama airport (It also helped that they had Big Bang Theory syndication going on the TV).

Luggage lockers, though I know those are things of the past, so you can wander around unencumbered. Same security excuse, though bus/train stations don't have problems with that (I remember a particular luggage locker in Germany that stored stuff underneath where you were and retrieved it for you, so it had more space than the lockers themselves took up).

ATMs. There are airports that don't have these! (I forget, but it was either Tegucigalpa or Guatemala City airports that didn't have ATMs. If it was Guatemala City, though, I can imagine we were told there were no ATMs if they were extremely crime-ridden......but since it was just the sedan car driver who answered our question of "where is the ATM?" I think he would have given us a straight answer.)

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Conversely, I got my card ripped off from an ATM in London Heathrow. Rather: I made a withdrawal on arrival, the card was returned to me with my cash like normal, it was the only time I used it the whole trip, and I had no idea anything was amiss... until I got home and promptly discovered that someone had mysteriously used "my" card from a completely unrelated ATM elsewhere in London several days later! Luckily I was able to document that, no, I was already well out of the city by then on my return flight, and after several rounds of fraud verification paperwork, my bank refunded the withdrawal. They theorized that the original machine was compromised and the hacker(s) were producing duplicate cards. Not the sort of "crime-ridden" I had ever before thought to associate with airport ATMs....

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

And not just airport ATMs. Card skimming is happening all over.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/all-about-skimmers/ is a pointer to a series on card skimmers. You'll never want to put your card in an ATM again. :)

Or at least you'll be more diligent about covering the keypad when you key in your PIN.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

ATMs. There are airports that don't have these!

It's true! Even when there are ATMs, often they're either not working or they don't accept your card.

Georgetown, Guyana didn't have any, and Paramaribo, Suriname only had ones that either didn't work or didn't take cards from outside of Suriname.

[chhotii.livejournal.com]

What happens to left luggage at airports with no left luggage office? Do they just blow it up right away? Irk!

[boosette.livejournal.com]

I know the answer to this one! Which is, it depends on the airline and the airport. (I know this, unfortunately, due to Air France losing a bag of AV equipment for my work this past summer.)

The airline holds onto it for a while -- if there's an external tag, they'll call the number on that tag. If there's no external tag, they'll sit on it for a while (could be weeks), and eventually open the luggage looking for contact information, the idea being that hopefully someone will call them. Which is nigh on impossible, when you need a specific airline at a specific airport -- I wound up calling the airport general line, and getting put through to the airline baggage desk (eventually acquiring their direct line), and being grumpy at them until they physically walked down to the baggage holding area to look for our bag.

Said baggage holding area is small, and once it gets overfull, the bags get sent off to a place like Unclaimed Baggage Center (http://unclaimedbaggage.com/) for pennies on the dollar.

(As for me, I'd like to see more airports with free or reasonably-priced wifi. Like, if I have a 45 minute layover, I do not need to pay $10 for a day-pass, thanks very much St Louis International Airport.)

[spinrabbit.livejournal.com]

A "left luggage office" isn't primarily for lost and found, or unclaimed checked baggage -- it's for "I want to go explore a little on my layover without hauling all this crap with me, will you please look after it for a while?" Like a coat check at a hotel or museum, but for luggage at a station/airport.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

There's even a mention of this on the Wikipedia page on luggage!

I should have been more clear in my original post, but I obviously didn't read the Wikipedia page first. :)

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Any features you'd like to see at an airport?

Pay phones at reasonable prices.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

More outlets available in general, and maybe some usb charger ports. Optionally, some kind of rent-a-charger thing so you can top up your phone's battery so you don't have to buy yet another charger.

[doctordidj.livejournal.com]

Free WiFi. I hate having to start an account and pay a big chunk just for an hour or so of use.

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

Free wifi, lots of outlets, sleeping pods, left luggage service (in the coat check sense, not the "unclaimed luggage office" sense), food that isn't all starch and fat bombs.

[karakara98.livejournal.com]

Quiet seating areas at the gates where you can escape the blare of CNN.

Spas

More plants for fresher air

[redbird]

Gate areas with enough seats for the number of passengers who will normally be using that gate.

I'm not even talking about running out of seats because massive delays mean that three flights' worth of people are crowded into the area, I mean that if they regularly use the gate for a 70-passenger plane there should be more than 25 seats.

[frotz.livejournal.com]

Airside viewing area for them as who like planes. (This is much better than it has been, though; many newer airports seem to have good options.)

I'm curious if "take a book, leave a book" lending shelves would work out. Likely make the bookstores sad, though.

Art. Obviously there's some of this out there. The underground galleries in Atlanta are a stunningly nice example; I just booked through there somewhat gratuitously so I can see what they've got right now. More generally, art/information/exhibits talking about stuff that's actually relevant to where the airport is so I can perhaps relate to it a bit instead of having just another anonymous transit lounge experience. Similarly, local food.

[cubes.livejournal.com]

Tampa airport has a kids' play area (like the ones you see in shopping malls, with padded-but-solid play structures and spinny things attached to the half-walls surrounding the area) in the airside out of which JetBlue flies. I don't know what I'd have done without it the time our flight was delayed 3 hrs and my kids were like3 & 4 yrs old. All airports should have these everywhere.

[esmerel.livejournal.com]

CDG has one of these in .. I think the Air France terminal? I forget now. It was a definite sanity saver!

[serendipity9000.livejournal.com]

I always loved that there was a full grocery store at the Frankfurt airport. I wonder if it is still there.

So my entry: grocery and/or drug store (like a walgreens or cvs).

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I liked that too! I didn't get a chance to look for it the last time I went through Frankfurt back in May because I never left airside, and I assume you mean the one in the basement, which is landside.

I did find this listing on the Frankfurt Airport website: http://www.frankfurt-airport.com/content/frankfurt_airport/en/shop_enjoy0/shops/fine_food_sweets/tegut____city.html

Another airport that has a grocery store is Singapore Changi. Both the one at Frankfurt and the one at Changi are landside.