Why I Love Airports

Editor’s Note: This editorial draws on more than 25 years of independent travel, first-hand experience and publicly documented evidence and regulatory changes. Many of these editorials were written years before the issues became mainstream, and have been updated to reflect current developments while remaining true to their original arguments.

Airports quite often don’t have many fans. For most people they mean long queues, security checks, delayed flights, overpriced coffee and the stress of trying to shepherd thousands of tired travellers through the same building. I understand why. But I absolutely love them, and here’s why.

Airports are curious places, bizarre and eccentric collections of every facet of human society. They exist in a strange space between countries, between time zones. Little pocket realities where time feels suspended. For a few fleeting hours, the entire human race seems to gather in miniature, each person carrying their own destination, story and reason for travelling. They are one of the closest things we have to a living microcosm of humanity.

Now, I get why some people hate them. I really do. Sometimes it feels as though airports were designed specifically to test the patience of even the most seasoned traveller. There is the endless theatre of boarding, designed only to make airline staff feel important and force everyone to crowd around the gate despite having an assigned seat. The overpriced essentials that somehow cost three times what they do anywhere else. Security staff who appear genuinely terrified of a bottle of water over 100ml. And, of course, that one annoying arsehole who waits until they reach the front of the queue before deciding it’s finally time to empty every pocket, remove their belt and reorganise half their suitcase. You’ve been in the queue for three hours! You knew this moment was coming!

It’s little wonder that most people just want to get through airports as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

But these annoyances aside, airports can be truly special places for those who are willing to slow down, look around them and enjoy the moment.

I have spent more than my fair share of hours in perpetual refugee status in airports all over the world, putting up with other peoples crying children,  trying to get a semblance of a nutritious meal amongst the vastly overpriced and obligatory junk food outlets and bedding down next to a complete stranger trying to curl up on the hard benches designed specifically so people can’t get comfortable, and honestly, I genuinely love them.

It isn’t because they offer anything particularly special about a destination or they are comfortable, relaxing places to spend a few hours. Most of the time they’re anything but. It’s because, somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing them as buildings and started seeing them as gateways to everything I love about travelling. 

Gateways To Adventure

Perhaps the biggest reason I love airports is because they are filled with anticipation.

The moment I walk through the terminal doors carrying my old bergen on my back, I know another adventure is about to begin. There is an unmistakable energy about the place, a quiet excitement that hangs in the air. Part of it is my own, of course. Even after all these years I still get that familiar exhileration knowing I’m about to disappear over the horizon again. Airports embody That insatiable curiosity that first made me fall in love with travel all those years ago. But it isn’t just me. It comes from everyone else passing through as well, thousands of people all embarking on journeys of their own, each with a different destination, purpose and story.

Simply being in an airport means life is moving forwards. I’m not sitting at home talking about the places I’d like to visit one day or scrolling endlessly through photographs of other people’s adventures. I’m doing exactly what I love most. I’m travelling.

That’s what airports represent to me. They are far more than functional buildings designed to move passengers from one flight to another. They are gateways to possibility, the threshold between ordinary life and whatever comes next. Every departure gate leads to a new experience, another lesson, another story I’ll eventually bring home.

Over the past twenty-five years I’ve travelled by just about every means of transport imaginable. Boats, cargo ships, tuk tuks, battered buses, jeeps, horses, camels, helicopters and more. But most adventures have begun the same way: walking through the sliding doors of an airport terminal with my bergen on my shoulders and absolutely no idea what the next few weeks or months might have in store.

After all that time, it’s impossible not to associate airports with excitement, optimism and possibility. Strip everything else away and they’re really nothing more than enormous bus stations for winged metal tubes. But to me, they’ll always be the place where the adventure truly begins, the familiar port before sailing over the horizon.

Airports Are My Constant. My Port In Life’s Storm

In many ways, airports have become one of the few constants in my adult life.

I’ve changed careers more than once, studied for two separate degrees, travelled to almost every continent and spent years wandering through countless countries, cities and forgotten corners of the world. My life has rarely stood still, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Variety has always been one of the greatest joys of travelling, and I’ve been fortunate enough to experience more of it than I ever imagined possible.

But for all that change and adventure, I still have the same innate human need for something familiar. Somewhere that feels comfortable, reassuring even. Strangely enough, after passing through so many airports over the years, that’s exactly what they’ve become.

As daft as it sounds, I genuinely feel at home in an airport. Any airport.

It isn’t because they’re luxurious or particularly welcoming. Quite the opposite, in fact. It’s because they’re reassuringly familiar. The departure boards flickering overhead. The currency exchange booths. The overpriced coffee, even the obligatory duty-free shops selling everything from giant Toblerone’s to designer watches that I still can’t believe anyone buys just before boarding a flight. The hurried business travellers. The backpackers sleeping on the floor. Even the constant stream of boarding announcements over the tannoy.

No matter where I am in the world, airports speak a language I know.

They’re like old friends quietly tipping their hat as I pass through on my way to somewhere new.

The Luxury Of Time

But perhaps the greatest gift airports give us is something most of us spend our lives complaining we never have enough of. Time.

Life has become relentlessly fast. We’re constantly rushing towards the next meeting, the next deadline, the next notification or the next thing demanding our attention. Every spare moment has to be productive, useful or somehow optimised. Waiting has become something we’re conditioned to resent.

Airports don’t really care about any of that.

Whether you’re waiting an hour to board or settling in for a long layover, they force you to slow down. For a little while, there is nothing else you can do but wait, and I think there is something strangely refreshing about that.

I use that time to do all the things people often tell me they never have time for. I’ll lose myself in a good novel, write a chapter for my next book or simply sit quietly with a coffee and let my thoughts wander. Sometimes I’ll close my eyes for a while. Sometimes I’ll just watch the world go by.

And that’s enough.

In a world that constantly demands our attention, simply allowing yourself to sit still and think has become something of a luxury. Airports are one of the few places where I feel completely justified in doing exactly that.

When I’m not reading or writing, I’m almost certainly people watching.

There are few better places to observe humanity than an airport. Every departure lounge is filled with stories waiting to unfold. Nervous first-time backpackers clutching boarding passes as though they might disappear. Families desperately trying to keep overtired children entertained. Business travellers navigating the terminal with the effortless confidence of people who have done it a thousand times before. Emotional reunions. Tearful goodbyes. Honeymooners setting off on the trip of a lifetime. Friends returning home after months apart.

Everyone is going somewhere, and everyone has a reason for travelling.

As a writer, I find that endlessly fascinating. Some of the characters I’ve created over the years have undoubtedly been influenced by people I’ve watched wandering through airports, and more than one airport scene has found its way into my novels. All I had to do was look up from my coffee and pay attention.

Airports aren’t perfect. They’re noisy, crowded, expensive and, every now and then, utterly infuriating. I’ve spent nights sleeping on terminal floors, endured delays that seemed to last forever, survived questionable airport meals and queued behind people who still haven’t grasped the concept of taking their laptop out of a bag before reaching the security scanner.

Yet none of those are the things I remember.

What I remember is possibility.

Every airport is a doorway to somewhere I’ve never been, someone I’m yet to meet or an experience that will stay with me long after I’ve unpacked my backpack. They’re places where ordinary life pauses for a while and the world opens up in front of you, where thousands of individual journeys briefly cross before scattering again to every corner of the globe.

Perhaps that’s why I have never understood the urge to rush through airports as quickly as possible. If you slow down for a moment, look up from your phone and simply watch the world around you, you’ll find that the journey has already begun long before the aircraft leaves the runway.

To me, airports have never just been places you pass through.

They are where adventure begins.

And after all these years, I still can’t walk into one without smiling.