Some airports around the world are designed with long layovers in mind. Changi Airport in Singapore and Dubai Airport are places where you wouldn’t hesitate to spend several hours between flights. If you’re not looking to explore, many airports have hotels on site where you can catch a few hours of sleep before your next flight.
However, other airports aren’t particularly nice places to be stuck waiting for your next flight. While there was an attempt to rank the best and worst airports for layovers using specific data points, the results didn’t translate to real-life experiences. What makes an airport conducive for a layover lies more in the intangibles than simply measuring the number of eating establishments per number of gates.
In addition, the duration of your layover matters. For instance, we had a 4-hour layover before our flight to Hawaii from LAX. At the time, I asked if it was worth trying to get into Delta’s SkyClub. While some said yes, there were other suggestions to hang out in a different terminal or even leave the airport.
As it was the easiest option, we ended up spending time in the Delta SkyClub (and almost missed our flight because of a delay with the inter-terminal bus.)
The situation on our upcoming flights to Vietnam is different. Our business class flight to Singapore leaves at 7:40 PM. The best positioning flight I could find from Orlando on United gets us to LAX at 11:40 AM. That gives us about 6 hours of free time between our flights (possibly more if we don’t need to claim and re-check bags).
That’s too much time to spend in a lounge, even though I plan on visiting the LAX Star Alliance lounge before our flight.
While I’d enjoy spending time at In-N-Out Burger, Sharon’s not a fan of watching planes or In-N-Out burgers.
There are literally millions of articles about what to do on an LAX layover but it feels like most of them were written by someone who’s never spent time at the airport (or by bots designed to maximize SEO.)
What are some good places to go for a few hours around lunchtime that aren’t that far from LAX? Do we need to worry about LA traffic if we choose to leave the airport? Any specific suggestions about places to eat or visit would be more helpful than saying, “Visit Santa Monica.”
If we choose to catch a nap, are there any good airport hotels that offer day rooms?
I’m obsessing because this is our biggest trip in almost a decade. I don’t want to start it off by having a horrible time during our LAX layover.
Thanks for your help!!!!!
Feature Photo: TDelCoro / flickr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
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