An ode to Madison’s airport
Madison’s airport is comfortable.
That’s the nicest thing I can say about my home airport — the Dane County Regional Airport (a.k.a. MSN).
That might seem like a backhanded compliment, but it is high praise in my opinion. Air travel can be very uncomfortable these days.
But good ole’ MSN is full of comfortable seating, has clean bathrooms, is rarely overcrowded and has friendly staff.
Even the TSA seems friendlier in Madison. It helps that you can get through check-in and security in 10 minutes some days.
Perhaps, it is a low bar, but the airport represents the city well. And that’s important.
I thought about this while trying to sleep during a seven-hour layover in the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. You have a lot of time to think when you are on a cold marble floor for hours, waiting to get on a 12-hour flight home.
“There is a sense of pride one wants to have in their public assets and infrastructure,” Jane Garvey, head of the Federal Aviation Administration in the Clinton administration, told Institutional Investor in an article titled “Why America’s Airports Suck.”
She continued: “Airports are our gateways. You want the gateway to be something you can be proud of.”
As the title of that article suggests, not all Americans are proud of their home airports. And some might even be embarrassed.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in airports in the last few years for work and vacation trips and many American airports suck and have fallen behind counterparts in other parts of the world.
“If I blindfolded someone and took them at two in the morning into the airport in Hong Kong and said, ‘Where do you think you are?’ they’d say, ‘This must be America; it’s a modern airport,’” Joe Biden, then vice president, told a crowd in 2014. “If I blindfolded you and took you to LaGuardia Airport in New York, you would think, ‘I must be in some third-world country.’”
Of course, creating modern airports through remodeling and expansion or by building new is a huge challenge. The bureaucratic-wrangling that must be involved to purchase land, navigate environmental and other regulations, fund, bid and then actually build must be immense.
Still, I wish America’s airports were as convenient and comfortable as most things in America.
Why can’t I find a comfortable place to sleep in an airport? Or go watch a movie in a terminal movie theater on my layover? I’ve never understood why those things are not readily available at airports.
I would happily pay inflated prices. Shut up and take my money.
Speaking of movie theaters, those big recliners are so amazing and comfortable. I wish there was a comparable improvement at airports.
These days, massive sports stadiums last about 30 years before they are remade. I wish the same were true of airports.
Of course, transportation is likely to be dramatically different in 30 years. Will flying still be a thing?
Will we fly through suction tubes? Will we be able to teleport? Hard to say. For now, I will just appreciate that I have a chill and comfortable home airport.
CRAIG SAUER is a writer, communicator and former journalist living in Fitchburg, Wis.
