Seattle Airport

❎ Unverified | Who manages this place? It is seriously disgusting, trash all over the floors, dirty restrooms. Not to mention that there is a serious lack of seating. The boards that post gate numbers aren’t correct and I had a staff memeber tell me that a lot of people miss their flights because the boards aren’t updated. If you know there is an issue why not fix it instead of wasting people’s time and money? Seatac is hands down the worst airport I have ever traveled through.

✅ Verified Review | When arrived from Emirates flight to Seattle, the customs system collapsed and we had to wait for 1.5 hours in the bridge to get access to immigration. Never saw that before. Even for special case scenario, people getting connections from the airport were was not able to do anything. Disappointing!

✅ Verified Review | Had a hard time getting to the departures area, tons of traffic congestion. Check-in was nice and short. Security was horrible, it took me over an hour to get through security as they only had 2 queues open. Getting to the southern satellite was easy and fast. There was not enough seating in the terminal, many people were sitting on the floor or were forced to stand. Wifi was incredibly slow and the restaurants were way too expensive for the portions and quality of the food. Only recommending this airport because of its hub status with Alaska and Delta. Good airport if you are connecting somewhere.

❎ Unverified | This is the worst airport I have ever been in. Arriving flights are left on the runway to wait for a gate. Half the pickup zones are closed off by police. The restrooms are filthy with no toilet paper and trash overflowing out of the trash cans. If I can avoid this airport in the future I will at all costs.

The way Seattle airport deals with passengers needs a total redesign. After landing early, we had a long taxi to our arrival gate. We then took a train and walked a long way back to the baggage claim section. Fair enough, but the channel was narrow and it all felt very cattle run. The icing on the cake was the shuttle bus to get to the car rental facility. I reckon that drive took us all the way back around the perimeter of the airport. Tired travellers. Crammed in, a nice driver dealing with annoyed people. Poor guy. Summary. I might have circumnavigated the whole airport twice before escaping. Maybe my airline just had pitiful priority. This place is not designed for customers. I've travelled through plenty of big airports around the world and none of them make such a stuff up of moving people around

✅ Verified Review | Traffic flow for departure and arrival at Seattle Airport is a mess. Officers for traffic do nothing to help keep cars from slowing down drivers getting in and out of the pick-up zones. This whole process needs to be reviewed and reworked. Then the cell phone lot having to wait for traffic lights that lets only a few cars out of the lot at a time really plugged up the already horrific traffic back-up all the way from the airport to hwy 518.

Although Sea-Tac has decent shopping, food, schedules, and on-time performance, it lacks badly in cleanliness, ease of use, and attention to detail. As stated in earlier passenger reviews, most of the terminal bathrooms and seating areas are filthy. Bathrooms are not mopped or deodorized often enough. The N and S terminal seating is dirty and broken, with hair, crumbs, and other grime lodged between the seats. Built-in power outlets in the N terminal seating do not work (the seating is Alaska Airlines branded, which reflects poorly on an otherwise decent airline). Some of the S terminal seating is not properly balanced or secured, which creates an awkward see-saw effect when another passenger sits down. Many of the airport's vintage Simplex clocks (obviously from the 1970s) are broken, which is unacceptable for any transportation facility. The process of using a train to access the satellite terminals from the main terminal and luggage claim is time consuming, arcane, poorly explained, and functionally obsolete. Elevators in the main terminal are slow (the cheaper hydraulic type) and difficult to find. In the domestic baggage claim, passengers are accosted by off-duty Port employees who sit behind a table eating fast-food and talking loudly amongst themselves (something so bizarre and inappropriate, I thought I was hallucinating). Also, the airport wi-fi is spotty. C'mon guys. This is the home of Amazon and Microsoft for Pete's sake.

✅ Verified Review | SeaTac is an embarrassment to Seattle with a monopoly. Even with PreCheck security is slow and often horribly slow for those without PreCheck. TSA sets up the security areas in very confusing and inefficient ways. Their priority seems to be how to squeeze in the longest possible lines of people rather than moving people through efficiently. SeaTac has outgrown itself. The region really needs another airport. There are often delays for take off. If you're lucky you back away from the gate on time but then either just sit somewhere on the tarmac or crawl along in a long line of planes breathing jet fumes. I've also landed many times and then had to sit waiting for a free gate. If you take anything but the light rail you're often stuck in horrible traffic congestion just getting to the airport. And it doesn't matter if you take the bus, use off-site parking, take Uber, a cab, etc. Everyone is stuck in the same mess. Around holiday peak travel times it can take 30+ minutes to travel the last mile or less to the airport. If you take the light rail to avoid the horrific traffic congestion, it's a very long, often cold or hot and sweaty walk. Most of the walk is outdoors which in a city with Seattle's weather makes no sense. And, regardless, it's a really long walk you have to account for when deciding when to arrive (or for those who can't walk long distances). During busy times the passenger arrival and drop-off areas are an absolute mess. People are parked 2 or 3 lanes deep with the cars on the inside trapped with no way out. It's likely partly so bad because the cell phone lot is often full as well. SeaTac simply doesn't have enough land to support the volume. I avoid flying with checked luggage as it's often a 30 to 45 minute wait for your bag. Sometimes it's been an hour. You ask at the baggage desk what's going on and they always say something like "we had a shift change" or they make some other excuse. Sometimes perhaps a third of the bags will hit the carousel then nothing for the next 15 minutes with everyone standing around complaining. You would think in a tech-heavy city like Seattle, SeaTac would offer great free WiFi right? Wrong. It's cumbersome to get access as the system first tries to sell you access. And once you do jump through all the hoops to get free access it's only good for 30 minutes and often horribly slow. There are also areas with no WiFi coverage. It's embarrassing for a tech city. SeaTac brags their shopping offers the same prices you would pay anywhere else, but that's because most of the food and shopping options are not available anywhere but in airports. So a small bottle of water is still $2.75. Prices are often not posted for beverages at restaurants or some of the shops/stands. That pint of local beer? $9.00 when it would be $5.00 or less elsewhere. The international arrivals and customs is horrible with long lines, no windows, etc. There's trash on the floor, the tables in the food court are usually gross, the restrooms have wet floors you don't want to set your bags on, and if you look along the walls and in the nooks and crannies there looks to be a months-old buildup of dirt. The cleaning staff appear to be lazy, poorly supervised, and likely understaffed.

I fly through here every 3 weeks, and it's always dirty. The bathrooms are disgusting and floors in waiting areas don't appear to get vaccumed regularly. I see matinence people everywhere, but rarely see them actually working.They really need to do a better job.

I am beyond embarrassed at my 'home' airport. It almost seems like Seattle wants to show off how "BIG" it is but always forgets about function and quality. Sea-Tac has 4 concourses connected to a central terminal and two satellite concourses via underground train. One satelite has international arrivals, it wasn't that bad because of my trusted flyer status but beware for normal travelers - very long queues for arrivals. But this does not even compare to the ridiculous departure sequence. We were flying international on the relatively few flights Sea-Tac does have and had to queue at the TSA for over 1.4 hours. I kid you not. Could Sea-Tac hire some airport personnel? I actually almost missed my international flight because I couldn't use my trusted flyer status and had to go through the normal security check, I informed the agents numerous times I had a pending Int'l flight (and was the only person with Int'l flight in the half mile long line) but luckily I called my airline who came to the TSA line and escorted me through. Ridiculous! I try my best not to fly international out of Sea-Tac, Vancouver is a light-years better experience with much larger terminals, more flights/airlines, and more to see/do, ditto for SF and LA.