Everyone Loves BDL

Our great state of Connecticut is roughly sandwiched between Boston and New York, both of which are serviced by large yet efficient airports. Meanwhile, we suffer through flying out of Bradley International Airport, which is a wholly different experience.

Hartford Courant blogger/columnist Colin McEnroe, writing about his trip to Japan, has a Bradley anecdote which makes perfect sense if you've ever had the displeasure of flying out of BDL:

I have pretty much the usual set of of travel stories, most of them having to do with the problems created by Bradley International. No matter how much they dress it up, BDL is still, at its core, a dusty airstrip in Honduras with a little palm-thatched hut adjacent. Yesterday, moments before I started the first leg to Detroit, a gate agent made one of those announcements that doesn't make any sense (but it doesn't matter because you have no say, anyway). "Because of the wind conditions [there weren't any] and because they are painting two runways, the plane can not take off at its usual full weight so we're considering asking 30 people to stay back or maybe taking off with less fuel and then flying somewhere else for more fuel and ..."

Huh?

Even she didn't really seem to know what she was trying to say. Only at BDL could air travel be substantially incommoded by "painting the runway."

At Bradley, it's pretty standard to wait 45 minutes for your bags to come out. Once, when we were coming home after visiting my grandparents in Florida, we sat around the baggage claim area for 90 minutes before our bags came out. And this was around 11pm, when there were no other flights arriving. I was very young at the time, but I knew Bradley was terrible.

Of course, not everything is the airport's fault. In an effort to improve passengers' experiences, Bradley constructed a new parking garage which was connected to the terminal by a covered walkway. The garage was completed in 2001, but was immediately closed after the 9/11 attacks due to security concerns. So, the new parking garage sat unused for a couple of years until the Department of Homeland Security granted a waiver.

For more on Bradley's problems, see this Courant story...

State police have arrested 10 baggage handlers at Bradley International Airport on charges they stole everything from laptop computers and cameras to 5-foot wooden African masks from checked baggage and air cargo.