Every Thirty Years the New Airport Gets Old
Thirty years ago my first route to the United States was Hyderabad, Bombay, Paris, Washington Dulles. A lot of us still call it Dallas. I did.
Indian airports then were crowded, not very clean, and not spacious at all. Paris was fascinating. Dulles felt modern.
I barely remember Paris as a city. I remember a woman yelling at me because I walked into a shop to browse. I still do not know what that was about. It sits there anyway.
That trip set a score in my head. Western airports were ahead. Ours were behind. The score does not hold still.
Airports built a long time ago keep changing. In the United States the change is often terminal by terminal. One concourse is new. The next one still has the carpet from the last renovation. The constant work is a good thing. An airport that stops moving starts losing.
Right now Abu Dhabi, Doha, and Hyderabad feel new. Wide. Bright. Built for the volume they actually get.
Skytrax’s 2026 passenger vote puts a number on the shift. Of the world’s top ten airports, four sit in the Western world: Paris, Rome, Munich, Vancouver. The first five are all in Asia. Singapore, Seoul, two Tokyos, Hong Kong. No US airport is in that ten. Houston is the first American name, at 29.
Frankfurt, on this trip, was all right. We parked far from the building. Construction, I think, and temporary. The terminals themselves are modern. They are also crowded, which is what happens when the traffic is larger than the last redesign.
The line I will remember is immigration. New EU rules for non-EU passports. The Entry/Exit System. Fingerprints and a face instead of a stamp. The queue looked, to me, miles long. That is the cost of a new system landing on an old hub.
I am looking forward to the work at Dulles. A new concourse is coming. I hope they need the people movers less. Those mobile lounges were clever in 1962. On a short connection into Concourse D almost nobody wants to wait for one. The train still does not go there. I found the workaround: AeroTrain to C, then walk to D. It still takes a long time.
That is the cycle. Thirty years ago Paris and Dulles felt new and Hyderabad did not. Now Hyderabad, Doha, and Abu Dhabi feel finished, and Dulles is the one under scaffolding, adding a concourse, and asking you to ride a train to a walk because the lounge on wheels has not retired yet.
The new airport gets old. The old airport gets a terminal. Then you fly it again and the score has moved.
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