The Academy Awards are not only about excellence in films and winning a coveted Oscar statue. It’s also about dressing up for the red carpet. And for the TV cameras.
Someone, or some team, at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), with a great sense of fashion and fun, was watching the show.
Here’s their Tweet thread of Oscars fashions and the liveries that may have inspired the outfits.
It was quite a Monday for some airports around the country. The day started out like this at Denver International Airport
San Francisco International Airport (SFO) announced that the SFO Wag Brigade, a team of certified stress-relief animals, is back on duty in the terminals after a 20-month absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The San Francisco SPCA certifies all participating animals through their Animal Assisted Therapy (ATT) Program. And, prior to returning to SFO, all Wag Brigade animals were recertified. We hope that means LiLou the airport therapy pig that used to visit SFO about once a month will return soon too.
Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) had to deal with a water main break nearby today.
And at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), there was a fire in one of the parking garages.
Let’s hope things go smoother on Tuesday.
As travelers, we are all too familiar with the search for a clean public restroom. We also know the delight of entering a public bathroom that is not just clean but blessed with quirk and charm.
Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic in full swing, clean and super-sanitized public restrooms are even more important.
So, we are delighted to see restrooms at both Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and the Jamacia Station on JFK International Airport’s AirTrain people mover line are finalists in the 2020 America’s Best Restroom contest.
Anyone can vote for the winning throne through October 19. The top toilets get a seat in America’s Best Restroom Hall of Fame and restroom cleaning services worth more than $2500 from contest sponsor Cintas.
Here are the finalists:
All gate-side restrooms at DFW Airport are now super ‘smart’.
The bathrooms have touch-free technology and the Tooshlights feature we’ve been raving about that uses red and green lights to indicate which stalls are open.
Digital signage outside each restroom lets passengers know how many stalls are open.
The new restrooms for the Jamaica Station stop on the AirTrain people mover at John F. Kennedy International Airport are nearly three times as large as the previous restrooms. As a nice bonus, the stalls are wide enough to accommodate luggage.
The Bancroft Park restrooms have green, red and yellow lights to show availability. Soap, water, toilet paper, and a dryer are all touchless. Better yet, the restrooms self-clean after every 30 uses and an app lets the maintenance crew know when toilet paper or other supplies are running low.
The Gaslight Bar & Grill in Cincinnati, OH is in a building that once served as a branch library. The restrooms have marble tile walls and gold wallpaper as well as touchless faucets and trash cans.
The kiosk-like restroom at Greeley Square Park in NY is decorated with historic photographs and has classical music, rotating seat covers, a full-time attendant, Italian tile, fresh flowers, and an HVAC system for seasonal climate control.
The Kimpton Muse Hotel restrooms invite guests and diners at the adjacent Muse Bar to pick a stall according to their personality or mood. There are six “sin-inspired” unisex stalls, each with a different theme and design: Glam, Vain, Rebel, Passion, Macho, and Envy.
All materials in the restroom at the Portland Japanese Garden – from the texture of the tiles to the design of the fixtures – are chosen for their standalone beauty, as well as functional works of art.
Standing ovation? These sleek and modern lavs have terrazzo flooring, glass-tiled walls, and plenty of spacious, stainless-steel stalls.
The lighting system can also be programmed for holidays, special events and specific audiences.
Swift’s Attic restaurant in Austin has Gothic-style restrooms with floral-patterned sinks, antique light fixtures, and gold and black striped wallpaper.
The Guild Hotel opened in 2019 in a century-old building built as a YMCA. Today the restrooms off the lobby have beautiful marble sinks with striking lighting, tiling and mirrors.
The “5 Things We Love About…” series on StuckatTheAirport.com celebrates features and amenities at airports around the world.
This installment of “5 Things We Love About…” lands at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), which sprawls out over almost 27 acres, with 7 runways and 164 gates.
Skylink is the elevated train that connects all 5 terminals at DFW airport. Tracks run above and outside of the terminals, with a train pulling into terminal stations every 2-to-3 minutes. An 18-minute round-trip offers great views of the airfield throughout the airport.
Here are some more details about the Skylink system, shared when the system celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2015.
Dedicated in 1995, DFW’s Founders’ Plaza is an Observation Area and park near the airport offering great views of aircraft taking off and landing.
The park plaza has parking, picnic tables, telescopes, historic information, a commemorative monument and a radio broadcasting air traffic control communications from the FAA tower. Hours: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.
Yes, DFW has a yoga studio. And a team of therapy dogs (DFW’s K9 Crew). But many people find relaxation in playing video games.
Luckily, DFW is home to 2 Gameway centers (at Gates E16 & B32) with a total of 36 gaming stations. Each station has a Playstation 4 Pro pre-loaded with games, a leather chair, 43″ 4K TV, noise-cancelling headphones, charging ports for your electronic devices and space to store your luggage.
Pricing includes an option for unlimited play, which for some will be a perfect match for long layovers and delays.
Big airports have lots of shopping options and DFW is no exception.
In December 2017, DFW Airport opened the largest duty-free store in the Americas. Over the years, we’ve scored plenty of charming and quirky Texas-themed souvenirs in shops throughout DFW as well.
DFW’s has a great art collection with more than 30 pieces of commissioned work including sculpture, paintings, mosaics and more. Many of the pieces are in International Terminal D and in the Skylink stations.
Did we miss a favorite amenity that you love at DFW airport? Add a note about in the comment section.
Have an airport you’d like to see featured in “5 Things We Love About…”? Leave a note below.
Want to sponsor the series or one of the installments? Drop a line.
Airports in the “5 Things We Love About …” series. So Far.
San Francisco International Airport (SFO)
Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX)
Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport (ICT)
Orlando International Airport (MCO)
Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP)Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW)
Do we detect a trend?
A few weeks back the first in-airport airport yoga room opened at San Francisco International Airport. Now comes word that there’s a yoga space at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
Located behind a partial privacy screen, DFW’s free yoga studio is located in Terminal D at Gate D40 and is equipped with yoga mats, hand sanitizer and a view.
The studio was installed in connection with the DFW “LiveWell” Walking Path and is a few feet from the start/end point of the Terminal D walking path that was also unveiled on Wednesday April 4.
DFW International Airport is big.
Within its 30 square miles are five terminals, two full-service hotels, a multi-million dollar collection of art and a golf course. There’s also Founders’ Plaza: DFW’s public observation park.
The park has the airport’s original beacon, along with shaded picnic tables, viewing stations and a live audio feed of the radio conversations from the air traffic control tower.
And now it has six, black-granite sidewalk medallions, each four-feet in diameter.
Laser-etched into the surface of each medallion is information about the history of the airport and of commercial aviation in north Texas. A different piece of the story is told on each medallion.
Want to see them for yourself? Founders’ Plaza is located at North Airfield Drive and Texan Trail, just south of State Highway 114 in Grapevine.
No time to leave the terminals? No problem. DFW has some nifty stuff inside as well. My favorites: the Cereality breakfast bar where you choose cereal and toppings and pajama-clad Cereologists fill up the bowl; the two La Bodega Winery locations and all the great artwork in Terminal D.
Photos courtesy DFW Airport.
(photo courtesy Daniel Incandela)
My column on USATODAY.com this month, Are airports ready for the 3-hour rule?, takes a look at how airports are gearing up for the April 29th roll-out of the new Department of Transportation (DOT) rule to upgrade protections for airline passengers.
We’ve been hearing a lot from airlines – they’re not happy – but I was curious about what the fall-out might be for airports if (when?) more planes end up turning around and coming back to the terminal and if (when?) more people end up stuck at the airport.
I was imagining I’d hear worry, maybe even hysteria, from airport officials. That’s not what I got. In fact, the responses I got down the line were more along the lines of “We’re ready. Bring it on.”
You can read the complete column – and the very intriguing comments readers have been posting – on USATODAY.com. Here’s some of what airport officials told me:
Airports at the ready
Long before the DOT announced enhanced protections for airline passengers, airports were holding meetings to work on creating tool kits and best practices that could be used during excessive flight delays. At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, for example, executive vice president for operations Jim Crites says that in 2007 the airport began purchasing extra equipment to help deplane passengers quickly. DFW also started beefing up communications with airlines, with regional airports that might get diverted flights and with airport concessionaires that might need to stay open later than usual during irregular operations. “The customer expects everyone to be on the same page. So instead of doing business in isolation, you began to see more coordination, more teaming up and partnering across entities.”
It’s the same story at many small and medium-sized airports. “After that incident when people were stuck on a JetBlue plane in New York for nine hours we agreed as a management team that we would not let that happen here,” says Russell Widmar, the aviation director at California’s Fresno Yosemite International Airport, “So we’ve had our own passengers’ bill of rights in place for almost a year and a half now.”
The plan that the team worked out was successfully put to the test in January 2008, when severe weather on the California coast brought 14 diverted planes to Fresno Airport. “It really isn’t any problem dealing with extra flights,” says Widmar, “The only difficulty is that these passengers don’t want to be in Fresno. They want to be San Francisco or wherever they were headed. But if they end up here, no matter when they drop in, we have services available for them. No one needs to be stuck on the airplane.”
Widmar believes that by now pretty much every airport is ready to deal with this type of activity. That includes the many small airports not currently covered by the DOT contingency plan rule, such as Indiana’s Fort Wayne International Airport, which often get diverted flights from Chicago and Detroit. FWA executive director Tory Richardson says “The DOT rule is silent on how the coordination plans are to be handled at small airports, even though there are a few hundred of us. But we will step up … Nobody wants the black eye that happened in Rochester.”
It’s not just Sunday – it’s Souvenir Sunday! The day we unpack our bags and find all the stuff we bought when we were stuck at the airport.
This week, I roped some great stuff while spending a few hours at DFW International Airport.
There was plenty of Longhorn memorabilia to choose from –
And this chocolate bar – which doubled as lunch.
And while the store clerk assured me those were real scorpions inside these lollipops,
I went home instead with a pocketful of these snazzy keychains.
Did you find great souvenir last time you were stuck at the airport? If it’s under $10, “of” the city or region and, ideally, a bit offbeat, please snap a photo and send it along. Your souvenir may be featured on a future edition of Souvenir Sunday.
In addition to the airport freebies I wrote about yesterday here at StuckatTheAirport.com, we have a few more airport events and giveaways to seek out during your Thanksgiving trek through the airport:
If you’re traveling through Boston’s Logan International Airport or Seattle-Tacoma International Airport today (Wed. Nov 25, 2009) look around for the “Fareologists” from Bing Travel. They’ll be answering travel questions (try to stump them by asking where the best place is to buy an extra pair of underwear) and surprising some folks (1,000 in all) in the ticketing areas by giving them a $15 card redeemable for cash anywhere MasterCard is accepted. Nice!
If you’re at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) Wednesday between 10 and 11 am look around for the world-famous Radio City Rockettes, who will be performing -and no doubt posing for photos with travelers – in the Baggage Claim area and at the Security Checkpoint in the Landside Terminal.
And between 8 am and 5 pm today (and on Saturday and Sunday; November 28-29, 2009) you can stop by an “Airport Privacy Haven” in Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD), Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) or New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport for a free massage and complimentary Wi-Fi between 8 am and 5 pm.
Enjoy!
On the road but no time to visit the art museum? Don’t fret: along with fine dining, boutique shopping and full-service spas, top-notch art collections are now permanent amenities at many airport terminals.
For a slide-show on MSN.com, I pulled together examples of some of the fun stuff you’ll find in 15 airports in North America.
You can see the full slide show by visiting the story on MSN.com Travel: Airports with the Best Artwork, but here’s a preview:
Artwork, some of it Texas-sized, by more than 30 local, national and internationally known artists dots DFW: Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Terminal D and the Skylink train stations. Look down to see elaborate medallions in the terrazzo floors, look up to see giant murals and mobiles and look straight ahead to see unusual sculptures such as Anitra Blayton’s 16-foot tall “Standing Ovation,” (above) made from the casts of hundreds of pairs of hands.
At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) the flying corncob on Concourse E is Craig Nutt’s work: “Corncorde,”
And at Sacramento International Airport (SMF) the big attraction is the supersized “Samson,” a sculpture in the Terminal A baggage-claim area made of two 23-foot tall towers of stacked luggage made of 1,400 pieces of cast-offs donated by area residents.
To see more fun airport art, see the full-length slide show on MSN.com travel: Airport with the Best Artwork.
If I missed some great airport that you especially like, please let me know!