I believe they hassle you if you’re checking a bag but with a carry-on no problem. I did it yesterday. Thru security and at the Skyclub in under 15 min.
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I flew into and out of ATL for the first time in January and I thought it was fine. I was flying super early though so security line was really short.
One negative was it’s a LOT of walking to get to and from the gate to transportation.
Rental car experience also very good.
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the description of an airport where you can “see the gates from the security line” made me instantly think of OKC
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us locals have come to like the walk. I walk the tunnels to my terminal and to baggage 90% of the time. kills time and gets steps in before sitting down for hours.
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I can understand this but I was not enjoying it at 6am after my redeye 
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I personally am not a fan of the Atlanta rental car center. The agencies being all on different floors with the weird escalator routing annoys me. And it’s not quick getting there. Lines at the desk always seem to be long as well. By far it’s the airport where it takes me the longest to get out, feels like I can never pull away sooner than an hour after landing.
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i agree with this. its an effort just to get there before the pain of rentals. Phoenix has a similar effort to get to the facility and it’s so much smoother
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What line? What desk?
These questions brought to you by emerald aisle. Shout out to National car rental.
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PHX is definitely smoother and I’m not sure whether it’s because of the layout when you get to the rental car center or just lower volume. The only complaint is that it’s so damned far from the actual airport, but at least they have the Sky train now, the old bus system was terrible.
Fair. I have Avis President’s Club now through United, which has been fantastic everywhere I’ve tried it so far, we’ll see how it goes at ATL later this Fall.
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There’s so much stuff here that I just don’t even recognize, as a constant traveler.
ATL experience for me is elite, because I have been through there 1000 times and know my way around the potential issues. Rental car area there is great from my perspective, but I only use National and am Executive, so car selection is good and the routine is always the same.
PHX is way better with the Sky train than it was before, but car selection is always worse than other hub airports in its class.
There’s also a big difference flying the “wrong” airline out of a hub. Delta experience at ATL is great, can’t speak to other airlines there. Delta at PHX has a bad TSA setup, not enough space and I always lose the guessing game of if Clear or TSA will be faster. American generally has shorter security lines and a more predictable flow through out of PHX.
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Immediately brought RIC to mind. The United gates are maybe 60 feet from security.
This is definitely an underrated variable, and not just for hubs. You can have two entirely different experiences at an airport depending on which airline you’re flying - mostly due to which terminal or concourse(s) they fly out of.
For years I thought Las Vegas was dingy and dirty, then I flew with United in there and was like “holy shit this is a different airport.”
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What’s funny to me is that I’ve had that experience in some airports where the hub airline has the bad terminal, and others are great. EWR comes to mind where United terminals are bad, and the new Delta terminal is deluxe. PHX is similar once past TSA
Old MCI was like this. You could almost see the plane when you were getting dropped off at the curb.
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I actually think the United Terminal C at EWR is quite solid, as is Terminal A (both United and Delta). Fly through security every time and good food options in each
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Brussels airport issues screwing with my trip.
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Same here and I can’t understand why they limit this to just status holders. Going straight to the car and getting a barcode has made rentals 100x easier than going to the desk and waiting in line.
SAN is a great example of this. T1 (Southwest, Frontier, Spirit) is old and sucks. The new T1 is almost open but it’s long overdue. Going over to T2 feels like a different planet. Even the difference between the United/Delta/Intl concourse vs the Alaska/AA side is a stark difference. T3 at PHX is so hit or miss with TSA, it’s so inconsistent, whereas T4 has so many access points you hardly ever have more than a 10 minute wait at TSA PRE.
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