There are many reasons that air travel can be stressful – and that’s all before you add in turbulence, baggage claim, and paying extortionate prices for a beverage on the flight.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, air passenger traffic fell 60%, resulting in billions of dollars in losses for the industry, layoffs, and labor shortages. As air travel rebounds, now-understaffed airports are overwhelmed by the increased passenger volumes, struggling to process the influx of travelers with skeleton crews. As a result, many of the things travelers hate about flying have been made even worse, which means more delays, longer lines, more crying babies – and crying adults.
While increased travel demand has made flying more stressful no matter where you are headed to or from, some airports are simply more stressful than others.
HawaiianIslands.com wanted to find out which airports around the world people found the most stressful. So whether you’re a seasoned pro traveler or are heading away for the first time, read on to find out which airports might be worth avoiding if you want a stress-free vacation.
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Key Findings
- Nine of the 10 most stressful airports overall are in Europe, four of which are UK airports.
- The most stressful airport in North America also has the worst delays.
- Egypt is home to five of the 10 most stressful airports in Africa.
- Surprisingly, the busiest airports are not necessarily the most stressful.
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15. Newark Liberty International Airport, United States
Stressed reviews: 69.8%
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
14. Albany International Airport, United States
Stressed reviews: 70.2%
Image Credit: Wikipedia.
13. Leeds Bradford Airport, United Kingdom
Stressed reviews: 70.3%
Image Credit: tupungato/iStock.
12. Amsterdam Schiphol, Netherlands
Stressed reviews: 70.8%
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
11. Santorini (Thira) Intl, Greece
Stressed reviews: 72.0%
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
10. Bristol, United Kingdom
Stressed reviews: 72.2%
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
9. Brussels South Charleroi, Belgium
Stressed reviews: 72.8%
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
8. Berlin Brandenburg, Germany
Stressed reviews: 73.1%
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
7. Beauvais–Tillé, France
Stressed reviews: 73.3%
Image Credit: Wikipedia.
6. Luton, United Kingdom
Stressed reviews: 73.4%
Image Credit: Wikipedia.
5. Bordeaux–Mérignac, France
Stressed reviews: 75.1%
Image Credit: Wikipedia.
4. Toronto Pearson International Airport, Canada
Stressed reviews: 76.0%
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
3. London Stansted, United Kingdom
Stressed reviews: 77.5%
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
2.Heraklion International Airport, Greece
Stressed reviews: 82.1%
Image Credit: Wikipedia.
1. Manchester, United Kingdom
Stressed reviews: 82.5%
Visit Hawaiianislands.com to see the complete list.
Image Credit: Depositphotos.com.
Methodology
To determine the most stressful airports in the world, we looked up the Google Maps profile for the Intl airports in every country. We only kept countries with more than two airports and airports with more than 1,500 Google Maps reviews. We also filtered the airports within a country, keeping only the top 10 airports for every country based on the number of reviews (except for the U.S and UK).
To analyze the reviews, we used a stress analysis tool that scores the stress level of a text from a range of 5 to -5. We considered a review to be stressed if its resulting score was -2 or lesser. We filtered the reviews without any text and the reviews that were not in English (either in their original language or automatically translated by Google).
Note: Although Wilmington Airport in Delaware restarted commercial activity in 2021, we didn’t include it in the list since the operations are very limited and incomparable with hubs.
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This article originally appeared on Hawaiianislands.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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