San Jose Airport

I was horrified to discover that the restaurants consist only of U.S. fast food. Other than coffee and I am thankful to Cafe Britt for that there is not a morsel of Costa Rican food available in the airport unless you include the Burger King typical breakfast. Not only that the food is poor quality and more expensive than it would be in the States. $29 for two small sandwiches a bowl of soup and two soft drinks is outrageous. There are several Costa Rican food chains that would be better quality and give a much better impression of the country.

Small modern clean airport with very efficient check-in and thorough friendly security lines. Decent tourist/souvenir shop post security as well. Great views of runways and adjacent mountains whilst waiting for flight. Food normal airport fare but coffee good - as it should be in Costa Rica!

It was well organized and fairly painless to get through. The one thing to avoid when you arrive is the official money changing desk before you leave the terminal. It is a rip-off giving 10% less then everywhere else for USD. Taxis all take USD as well as colones.

The new Terminal B has finally opened. The new terminal is very high tech: chairs have internet connections; all-new local restaurants and shops throughout. Security is a breeze. Only one complaint: it is a long walk from security to boarding gates so bring good shoes.

When one leaves Costa Rica there is a $26 airport charge. If one pays by credit card the Costa Rican government puts the charge in as a cash advance fee. When your credit card bank gets that charge they then charge you a minimum cash advanced fee of $10. Don't use your credit card to pay for the exit tax. It'll then cost you $36 to leave Costa Rica.

Be aware - after security there is no place to change money. If you have more leftover colones than you want to spend (which can be challenging to figure out since ALL prices after security are in dollars) you have to hope that you can get change from colones in dollars as a helpful person at Church's fried chicken did for me. There is also no bar after security making spending colones more of a challenge. Well there is a bar but it is in the smoking lounge which is in the basement and is unair conditioned so unless you are a smoker who likes to sweat it's not really an option. All food options in the terminal are American. It's clean and spacious (except for the construction area) and the farther you are from the construction area the better the A/C works. Some gates require a bus ride. Check-in seemed chaotic but was faster if you had done e-check-in with TACA. The security area was cramped due to construction but it moved quickly. As of 3/20/10 you can pay the departure tax in colones or dollars - if you use a credit card it is treated as a cash advance so be careful. You have to pay the departure tax before you check in - your migration form is on the back of the receipt and you need to fill that out before you check in. I liked the airport when I arrived (although I couldn't find an ATM on the arrivals level - you may have to go upstairs) but much less impressed on departure.

Terminal A (Southwest Airlines): The dingy dark and narrow corridors cause a serious overcrowding problem during peak flight times. The food options are overpriced and of poor quality. The airport is difficult to get to and requires navigation through downtown San Jose's horrible freeway system. The rental car kiosk is offsite and requires a long shuttle ride to get to/from the terminals. The only positive about this airport is that it's only 2 miles from downtown San Jose. The terminals are too small outdated and in dire need of re- design.

The airports decision to move United to Terminal A was very poorly planned. Making customers aware that this happened was non-existent as far as I could see. I just flew out and back on United at Terminal C just last week and I didn’t even know that this was going to happen. I dropped off passengers at Terminal C they were passed through security and only found out that United Moved to terminal A by the time they couldn’t see any United Gates. They even commented to the TSA representative that it seemed pretty quite there and the response was “oh yea Continental moved to Terminal A”. This was after they scanned their United Boarding Passes. Why did TSA allow passengers into a terminal that doesn’t support that airline? They checked the boarding pass but I now wonder why? I am VERY alarmed that any boarding pass valid or otherwise will allow anyone to enter a terminal. This seems to me to be a VERY large security issue. I would think that very simply the TSA agent would have a boarding pass scanner to verify that the boarding pass is valid and then verify ID. There are very few to none inter-terminal busses. I would have thought that they would try some very simple measures to assist your customers such as posting someone at the entrance to security warning of this change assuring inter-terminal busses to help customers who have no idea that they have changed the airport around. I took the Terminal C cut-off and I do not recall seeing any signs warning of the change. My passengers all missed their flights due to the fact that the switch to terminal A was poorly communicated there were no busses to get them to Terminal A and security lines were excessive. They now have to make other flight plans possibly at another airport.

For a smaller airport we found it very efficient. One thing we enjoyed was a smoking lounge AFTER you go through Security. Great place to kill a little time. The server there will go to the food court for you and get you a sandwich. Lounge itself serves cold drinks and coffee. As smokers it's getting harder and harder to find a place to smoke. This seems a great idea to me. Wish all airports had one.

I travel to Costa Rica once or twice a year for over 18 years and they do not let you bring on beverages post initial security as they check your carry on manually in the jetway for liquids. I think they need to allow passengers to purchase an additional water to take on as most flights I am on are 5 hours. Otherwise just a small average airport.