4 Stressful Things About Airports

Have you ever stood in the passport line for over an hour? Bought a ham and cheese croissant for 8 euros? Well, we’ve all been there. And that’s why we have made a list of the most stressful situations and things you can encounter in an airport. Let’s drink some calming herbal tea and go over the list together!

Flying low-cost and… forgetting to do something
And that something is important. In fact, it’s so important that the check-in clerks will ask a lot of money from you. Typical fees for not doing an online check-in, or having a few extra kilograms in your carry-on baggage might extend to 80 euros per person depending on the particular airline. Don’t even think about begging for mercy, the staff is usually adamant about the imposed rules. It’s part of their pricing model: the fare may be cheap, but people are often paying for the extras such as penalties for missing some of the mandatory steps before boarding the aircraft or even something as silly as needing a bit of water to drink aboard the plane.

Last call, please, last call
Please make your way to the boarding gate immediately. We are closing the gate and we’ll proceed to offload your baggage if you aren’t here in two minutes, Mister… If the sentence ends with your name, you can bet that the stress levels are through the roof. To make things worse, you are probaby already on the edge after a bad string of incidents made you miss the boarding time in the first place. Now, the prospects of missing your flight and being publicly shamed on the intercom aren’t making your day better. ‘Last Call’ may sometimes blink on the screen for more than ten minutes, but you know that it’s time to make your new 100m foot race record when you hear yourself being addressed on the public speakers.

Hungry, but on a tight budget
A heated-up, formerly 2-years-frozen muffin for 4 euros? Caesar salad with prawns for 19 euros? No problem! You can pay these prices in most European airports, although some places are worse than others when it comes to food prices. Naturally, countries that already boast higher-than-average prices will have expensive airport food. But in some smaller airports, the competition between the companies is almost non-existent, and that gives a major incentive for the restaurants and delis to up their prices. Because what are you going to do if you are very hungry and you are already through the security? Miss your flight after taking an Uber to a cheap pub serving delicious food in the downtown? Not really. And they know this.

Battery level: 9%
Flight time is 6 hours and your phone’s battery is 9%. Your e-reader is at 12% (usually stops working at 8%). Thankfully, some airports have started to tackle the problem of no sockets by partnering up with other companies to provide phone charging stations. There are still many airports where finding a charging station or a socket is akin to a scavenger hunt that’s no fun at all. Plus, please notify the guy that it’s not okay to charge your five devices simultaneously when the whole terminal literally has only five sockets available.