Atlanta Hartsfield Airport

❎ Not Verified | I wish I knew about this website before I booked my flight. 2 hours in an immigration queue. 500 people and only 4 booths open for international passengers. Twice as many for domestic. And at least 10 TSA staff standing around literally doing nothing. I had a lot of time to observe them! When I commented to the immigration official as to how shocked I was at how it was managed he laughed and I must never have been to Atlanta before. Well I never will again. Shambolic. Everyone in the queue around me knew they had missed their connecting flight.

✅ Trip Verified | Worst airport experience ever. Took two hours to travel from Domestic to Int'l terminals. No train, just poky little minibuses that could only take ten passengers at a time, leaving long lines, fuming. 19th century service. Will never fly through this airport again unless forced.

❎ Not Verified | This has to be the worst airport I’ve had the displeasure of travelling through. There is nothing in place to separate people who are in transit to those who are actually staying in the US so it was complete mayhem as people queued for an hour at immigration watching the minutes to their next flight tick by. The staff were rude and completely unhelpful and seemed to shift lines about randomly so some people ended up through quicker despite others having earlier flights to catch. We asked several times, as did others, what to do about our connecting flight and were quite bluntly told it was basically tough luck and the only option was to see if people would let you cut in line. If that’s your only suggestion what exactly is your job role here other than to stand around and annoy people? We then had the same queue and problems at security therefore missing our flight. The staff at the Delta desk were also very rude and blamed the fact that it’s the busiest airport in the world. Clearly better systems should be in place if that’s the case. The consequence was that we had to actually pay to stay in a hotel overnight so we could fly the next morning. An absolute shambles of an airport with rude and very unhelpful staff. I’ve used many airports around the world for transit and have never had this issue before.

❎ Not Verified | After flying the last flight on Southwest Airlines from Dallas to Atlanta, March 11, 2018 the trains were not running and I had to walk over 3 miles from the D gate to baggage claim. The road was blocked by construction and no one announced that we had to exit to a lower level for pickup. No communication with passengers!

✅ Trip Verified | Absolutely awful airport. Busy and so unorganised. You are asked to queue in various queues at customs and watch as people who come after you in the queue are moved to a new queue that is seen to be faster than you are and then as you approach the front of the queue you get moved again. So badly organised, queues should be first come first serve. Takes so long to get through customs before you can claim baggage to walk around a corner and place it to be on your next flight just because you're transit is in Altlanta. This is before you even get through security and run to your gate to catch your next plane. Staff do not care that you may have a connecting flight. Awful experience both to and from whilst using Atlanta as transit. Will certainly be avoiding in the future.

❎ Not Verified | Missed Flight to Milwaukee because gate change not called out. Arrived at Hartsfield Terminal D from Columbia SC at 8:15AM Friday morning checked monitors upon exiting plane stating Milwaukee flight at Gate B29 departing at 10:26AM. Walked to tram and checked the board again for gate information. Still B29. Got off at Terminal B and walked to Gate B29. Checked the board once again. B29. Sat down at B29 for at least an hour and a half. No mention of a gate change. No announcement of a gate change. Other flights going out to Philly and Pittsburgh from B29. Fifteen minutes before departure, I see a monitor stating that gate was now B6, all the way across the terminal other end. Hustled down to B6. with two minutes to departure time. Was told the cabin door had been closed and the plane was about to pull away. They could rebook me for another flight later that day. Was smugly told I should look at the monitors to get gate information. Really disappointed in Delta especially given this was their hub operation. Not pleasant. Rethinking future plans.

✅ Trip Verified | In transit from Punta Cana (Dom. Rep.) to Amsterdam. The largest and busiest airport in the world, but clearly under-capacity. Bag drop and customer assistance counters had reasonably short wait times, but queues for immigration and security checks were very long, even at off-peak times. The immigration officer I had was much more polite and respectful than most of those I've experienced at US airports. TSA agents were polite and seemed professional, if a little laid-back. Some areas of the airport have better food options than others, depending on which concourse/terminal you're in. One thing that caused me some stress was the fact that I received different answers from different personnel. Every time I've passed through the US in the past, I've always had to clear immigration with my baggage (i.e. collect baggage from the carousel, clear immigration, then drop off baggage again). As my baggage wasn't on the carousel, I asked a few airport personnel, who were all polite and friendly enough, but they all told me different things. Some said always collect your baggage, some said it wasn't necessary because of my final destination, some said my luggage must have been lost, and some said to check at the gate when boarding (which would have been too late at that point). My layover was 2hrs 25mins. I only arrived at the departure gate around 20 mins before scheduled departure time, which was 40 mins after they started boarding. My advice would be to leave yourself at least 3 hours between flights but, even at that, you won't have much time to eat, shop or relax. Because of this, I will avoid this airport in future.

✅ Trip Verified | We (6 person group) arrived at Atlanta Airport at 7.22pm on Wednesday night 2/28 (on time from SJO Costa Rica). The planning included an almost three hour layover at ATL to pass through Customs and security. The confusion, lack of available personnel to help and administer travelers was the worst I have seen in 50 years of airline travel. It took more than two and one half hours to clear customs and security. We have TSA traveler number, but the attendant told us it was not applicable at this location. Many travelers missed their connecting flights, and pickup service. After running, we finally arrived at our gate at 9.55, only to be told our airline was on the tamac and was being held up. So after all of that delay we got on the Delta plane after it was 25 minutes late. This is all in good clear weather? Over three hours later.

✅ Trip Verified | Unbelievably bad airport to pass through. Even though the people were nice enough, the airport was so busy that our early arriving plane of 10 minutes had to wait 30 minutes to get to the gate. Then after going through a Global Entry, I found out they don’t have Global Entry security lanes from international to local travel. Why be a known Traveler with Global Entry when you can’t through security for another hour? From the time of landing to getting through security for our connecting flight was 2 hours! I will never buy a ticket again with ATL as a connecting airport. Backwards airport with lazy TSA.

✅ Trip Verified | ATL is the busiest airport in the United States, so you'd assume that the ground staff and TSA folks at this airport take their jobs seriously, and are efficient. Unfortunately, that's not true. As someone who's traveled extensively through the US (every week) and internationally (several times a year), I'd like to believe I've seen the gamut of airport experiences. ATL continues to be one of the worst on my list (rivaling SEA). The security screening process at ATL is an absolute nightmare. It's the slowest, most inefficient security check process I've seen. It'll take you well over 35-40 mins to get to the TSA officer who screens your boarding pass, and that's on a "good" day. The TSA staff can clearly see the huge line, but refuse to open up more checkpoints/belts. Worse, the airport monitors continue to project a delusion that the wait time at all the checkpoints is less than 15 mins. I'm baffled how they could lie outright like that. Another issue is the belts for carry on screening. They have a bin system, wherein you have to fill up several and push them on to the belt. Leads to all sorts of confusion, and I've timed it and know for a fact that it's slower than the simple "push through" at most major airports. Overall, despite being the busiest airport in the country, ATL has a huge scope for improvement in terms of the efficiency of the security screening and boarding process.