"Portland International scored at the bottom of categories of overall airport satisfaction, airport accessibility, terminal facilities and food and retail services."

Ok it's all subjective but low on accessibility? Accessibility? Can someone tell me how PDX can get more accessible? Walk out of the Hilton and it's right there? A freeway that goes directly from downtown Portland right to the airport? With no other exits in between? I have never been to Midway but how "accessible" can an airport in the Middle of Chicago be?

Greg C

Those airport users don't know what they're talking about. Conde Nast got it right. They make their own reality. All seriousness aside, as a regular user of SJC and OAK, I would rate both of them far, far worse than PDX for terminal facilities, food and such. Where PDX falls down worst is the time it takes to deliver checked baggage. Not much excuse for that. I just wonder what it's like now that we have two wide-body arrivals from Europe scheduled in the space of 10-15 minutes.

Allen,
I have to agree. San Jose is one of the worst airports I've flown out of in the US. Little choice of food service, insanely crowded terminals, and lines out to the parking lot for security screening.

Where Portland is worse than San Jose is the attitude of the "security" screeners; I've never seen a group of nastier, more incompetent people than the TSA personnel at PDX. They once took my handbag behind a partition to "screen" it, and when I objected, asking them to screen it in my presence, they threatened me with arrest. I've had other run-ins with them as well, and personally know some people who have had stuff stolen by PDX screeners...and others whose credit cards were mysteriously "found" under the screening machine after somehow escaping from the owner's wallet as it went through the xray machine. Bunch of thuggish thieves they have there.

I love PDX. I'm not a super frequent flyer, but in the past year I've been in OAK, ONT, MFR, SLC, JFK, LGA, DTW, CLT, RDU, IAH, ATL, BWI, BOS, GSP, and SAN. PDX has better food at more reasonable prices than all the rest, and it's the only one with free Wi-Fi. None of them have views like Mt. Hood just past the end of the wing.

That's a pretty silly assessment. PDX itself is great and easy to use. The retail is price controlled and thus reasonable. The terminals are new and bright. PDX's biggest problem is that it serves a small city. As such, it has fewer direct flights and less frequent flights to hubs than larger airports.

I don't have a ton of experience with the airports on that list, but the two I use most frequently are PDX and SAN (San Diego). It is an absolute JOKE that San Diego is rated higher, as it is outdated, uncomfortable, inconvenient, not to mention one of the most dangerous places to land in America (they conveniently built a parking garage directly in the flight path). Seriously, I cannot believe anyone could rank SAN ahead of PDX. I'm no PDX homer, but that's just absurd.

They don't get much press because surveys like this are crap. Much like the viewer polls on the evening news. Seriously, the posts above are dead on.

As a Portlander, I'm happy with PDX. I don't support raising my taxes or airport fees to make people stopping in for 15 or 30 minutes 'happier' with their experience here.