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Comment by hoi | Hacker News Reader

Other issues such as immigration process is a major cause of discontent at US aiirports when compared with other countries immigration workflow, particularly for non-locals.

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This is true - entering the US can be a very painful experience (despite SFO being quite a nice airport I've still had a two hour plus wait on occasion), but Heathrow was just as bad last year at certain points, with two hour plus waits to clear immigration.

Heathrow also has craptacular immigration and security handling and still managed to make the list. So there has to be more to it than that.

They've probably ranked up the value of diversified shopping. They would explain why rubbish large airports get ranked miles above small, efficient Australian and Scandi airports.

Heathrow has the most aggressive Skytrax campaigning I've seen (note: some compared with nearly none) in the 7 of the top 10 airports I've been to, which might have something to do with it. It's definitely not in the same league as the likes of Incheon and Hong Kong in my experience.

One serious issue in Heathrow is that gate numbers are not shown (not even printed on your boarding pass) until 30 minutes before departure, and the gates are supposed to close 15 minutes before departure, but it takes 20 minutes to walk to some of the gates from the waiting area. Of course they bend the rules so that people make it to their flights, but what happens when they don't?

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