Let’s face it: complaining about air travel is one of the best parts of air travel. With long delays, unsatisfying (and expensive!) food choices, and intrusive security measures, it’s no wonder why so many travelers feel the need to vent every once in a while!

That being said, the good folks who fly the planes, the pilots, sometimes find the whole experience to be just as exhausting as the rest of us. Recently, a number of anonymous real-life pilots took to a thread on Reddit to respond to what turned out to be quite the loaded question: Pilots, what is your least favorite airport?

The world’s worst airports, from the mouths of pilots

Topping the list of the most loathed airports by pilots is none other than New York City’s infamous LaGuardia. According to one aviator, LaGuardia is a “pain from 18,000 feet until you’re at the gate,” but once on the ground and out of the air vessel, the airport evidently doesn’t get much better.

“[LaGuardia] is packed,” the pilot laments. “The food sucks and it’s insanely expensive. There’s people everywhere. It’s old.”

Yep, we’ve flown into that airport as passengers many a time, and we certainly do agree with everything in the above statement—it’s crowded, the food is awful, and the whole place could certainly use a facelift.

In fact, a recent poll published by J.D. Power showed that LaGuardia has the worst reputation among U.S. airports. A population of air travelers gave the notorious airport a 647/1000 rating for satisfaction. Apparently, these passengers were not happy about the airport’s aforementioned shortcomings, especially considering 29% of its flights are delayed. Yikes!

One of the more “random” airports on the list is Jiggalong Mission, a small airport that is located in the outback of Western Australia. According to one pilot, Jiggalong has one major design defect that can be summed up in three powerful words: “Too many rocks.”

At first, we thought the pilot might be yanking our chains a bit. After all, how can a runway have “too many rocks” on it? But, then we did some further research courtesy of Google Earth and found this:

For those of you who may be confused, that’s an aerial shot of Jiggalong’s runways.

All of a sudden, the idea of an airport having “too many rocks” makes total sense to us—if the airport’s runways are unpaved and made of rocks, that is.

Another mutually hated airport? Georgetown Airport, a public airport two miles northwest of Georgetown in El Dorado County, California. Why? Lots of reasons—six, in fact, according to this pilot. Besides being on a mountain, one end of the runway ends on a cliff and the other ends 10 feet from some trees! There’s an incline on the runway, plus its narrow, bumpy and short nature doesn’t help make takeoff any easier. Oh and it’s “in the middle of nowhere, and almost completely deserted.”

Someone else agreed, posting a photo of the airport on Google maps saying it made them feel like they were “having a seizure.” Accurate.

Washington Dulles Airport is another despised airport by pilots. In fact, the first person to even mention the airport admitted he wasn’t even a pilot, but actual pilots couldn’t resist sharing their feelings either. 

“Let’s have two terminals with the only way to get between them is a custom arctic crawler!” one sarcastically posted. “Non-existent amenities, crappy delays, Immigration staff that are power tripping. Seriously if you have to land anywhere near there, land at Regan or BWI.”

Another complained about the insane radio and airplane traffic, and the security guards being less than friendly. 

These pilots sure didn’t hold back! Who knew they hated some airports just as much as we do? See more of their posts and other mutually hated airports here.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these pilots’ least favorite airports. Have you had any terrible experiences with any of the airports mentioned? If so, what happened? Are you a pilot or flight attendant who would like to add an inconvenient airport to this list?