atlanta information

Atlanta's airport

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
+1 (404) 209-1700
website

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is the world's busiest: almost 84m travellers in 2004, recalling the saying that after you die, and before you get to heaven, you'll have a stopover in Atlanta (and Hartsfield-Jackson is indeed rather purgatorial). (Two smaller airports, Fulton County and Peachtree-DeKalb, serve private planes, but all commercial flights use Hartsfield-Jackson.) It has six terminals: A,B,C,D and T serve domestic flights; E serves international flights. A tram connects all terminals to a central atrium, which hosts ticketing, baggage claim and a small food court.

The terminals are not uniform: A (home to Delta Airlines, the airport's largest presence) and E (the newest and biggest) are the nicest, C (home of AirTran, a budget carrier, and ASA, Delta's delay-plagued regional carrier), the grimiest and most crowded, is getting a welcome makeover. Fortunately, the security checkpoints cover all the terminals, so a traveller delayed for a flight leaving from B or D can easily slip over to E's food court.

Baggage claim, ticketing and parking are divided into North and South. Rental car shuttles, taxis, hotel shuttles and MARTA (as the city metro is known) are available from both sides. Hartsfield-Jackson is about a 15-minute drive from downtown Atlanta during off-peak hours, but if your flight leaves between 7am and 10am or 4pm and 7pm, allow more time. Construction for underground bomb-screening facilities, scheduled through December 2005, has lengthened the walk from the parking and drop-off area to the airport itself.

posted by none @ 7:27 AM