ATL - Georgia

I have a layover in Atlanta whenever I go to or from the UK and I dread it every time. The gate number is always changing or the flight is always getting delayed. Last time I missed my flight entirely and had to catch another one which was meant to leave an hour and a half later, but ended up leaving FIVE HOURS later instead. Has anyone else experienced this kind of thing going through Atlanta?

I've flown in and out of Atlanta literally a hundred times (or maybe more) - my outbound flights are nearly always delayed, but usually only by an hour or less, which to be honest is pretty good for an airport of that size.  I've had much worse experiences with delays and cancelled flights in Newark, Boston, Chicago and Dallas/Fort Worth.

At least there's a lot to do in Atlanta!  Try being snowed in at the airport in Cleveland - I once spent the night there with four other stranded passengers, and the one and only shop (Burger King) closed at 8pm!

We got stuck there for 24 hours a few weeks ago.  It was horrible!

I usually fly in & out of Atlanta when I go back to the US to visit.  It's not too bad usually.  Pretty much any large airport tends to have flight backups & delays to some extent as the day goes on.  Word to the wise:  if you can get an early flight, do.  Yeah, it sucks getting up in the wee hours of the morning to check in early enough & catch a 7 am flight or earlier, but a flight at that time is a) less likely to be as crowded and b) much more likely to be on time (unless bad weather intervenes which no one can control).  As it gets later in the day, if there are delays - then those delays affect the flights scheduled after them, and it all starts to stack up on itself, and so on...

Case in point, on our recent US trip - I was dreading that we were flying on the Sunday after Thanksgiving -- typically one of the busiest days for air travel in the entire year.  Yet our 7 am flight from Atlanta to Tampa was far from crowded & ran perfectly on time (no bad weather)!  It was so smooth that you wouldn't have even thought it was one of the year's busiest travel days.  Yet on the news that night -- there was all the usual hoopla about how bad it was at all the airports (to be expected, of course & there was some bad weather up north I think), but we saw none of that whatsoever.

I have to agree with other posters, big airports == delays. In atlanta, at least there are quite a few shops and eateries (especially if you browse other terminals). At least its not Washington Dulles!!! Its very dull

In atlanta, at least there are quite a few shops and eateries (especially if you browse other terminals).

We had a pretty long layover in Atlanta going from Manchester to Wichita, Kansas recently.  But after the long flight over the Atlantic (8-9 hours), we spent the layover getting exercise by walking the length of all the terminals back & forth - window shopping & all, and still had time for a nice meal at TGIFridays.

As I just posted in another thread, I thought I was going to have about 3 hours to kill at Omaha airport once, and it's not exactly full of things to do.  Fortunately I arrived just in time to catch an earlier flight and spent the extra 3 hours at St. Paul/Minneapolis, where I found an interesting display of aviation history to while away the time. 

Does Hartsfield still have all those annoying, repetitive computerized messages on the shuttle?  ("The doors are about to close......  The doors are closing......   Please hold tight, the train is about to depart...... Next stop is concourse A.......  The train is slowing down, please hold on......"  Aaargghh!)

...where I found an interesting display of aviation history to while away the time. 

Atlanta generally has interesting displays up as well.  Right now, there's one with Martin Luther King memorabilia & one with all kinds of different puppets from all over the world.

  Does Hartsfield still have all those annoying, repetitive computerized messages on the shuttle?  ("The doors are about to close......  The doors are closing......   Please hold tight, the train is about to depart...... Next stop is concourse A.......  The train is slowing down, please hold on......"  Aaargghh!)

Yep, it does!   But if you've got time to kill, you don't have to ride them - you can walk the terminals & get exercise!

Atlanta can be so weather sensitive--like any big airport, there are good days and bad ones. But if you do miss your connecting flight there are usually flights afterwards that you can get on since it is such a busy airport.
I've probably spent more time in that airport than anyone else here because I'm a flight attendant and work ATL-LGW and ATL-MAN flights. I feel like I know every inch of that airport