Perspective: Revisiting the Salt Lake City Airport trek after experiencing JFK

About 18 months ago I made my first trek through the Salt Lake City Airport B gate tunnel and wrote about the harrowing journey. I detailed the difficulties of making the walk with three children, and the response was ... passionate. According to the internet, I was lazy, out of shape and a terrible mother. Part of me began to wonder if the internet was right.

Since that story’s publication, I’ve had the chance to make the .64 mile walk a few more times. And I can confidently declare that I was correct. The walk is long and miserable for toddlers and their adult handlers, lazy or not, in shape or not, good mom or bad mom.

But I’ve also had the chance to walk through other airports and gain some perspective. And that perspective is, all airports have some terrible obstacle that must be survived to fly into or out of them.

The Denver International Airport is one of the most confusing and maybe haunted facilities I’ve ever been in. Travelers are welcomed to the airport by Blue Mustang, more commonly known as Blucifer, a 32-foot horse sculpture with glowing red eyes that is best known for crushing its creator to death. Within the building, patrons are greeted with cheery murals depicting death, war and destruction. Theories abound that the New World Order built the airport and it contains the Illuminati headquarters.

LAX is never not under construction, and makes it nearly impossible to exit its premises. On my last visit I had to wait 40 minutes for a shuttle to a pickup area where I waited another 40 minutes for an Uber.

The last time I was in the Atlanta airport, every restaurant in the terminal was closed at 5:30 p.m., except for a TGI Friday’s to-go which sold a nearly inedible chicken sandwich for $20.

But no airport experience is quite as terrible as John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens.

The drive to JFK from Manhattan can take anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours. The traffic patterns of New York City seem to sense when someone is in a hurry and respond by grinding to a halt. Or such was the case on my most recent trip.

“Getting from this bridge to the airport usually takes me two minutes but today it’s going to take 17,” my driver joyfully told me while I was sweating bullets in the backseat, 45 minutes from my plane departing.

By the power of CLEAR, a service I accidentally signed up for and forgot to cancel, I made it through the very long security line in no time at all. (But not without the humiliation of standing in my socks on a dirty linoleum floor and getting scolded for not removing an iPad from my backpack.)

Once I got my shoes back on, I started (what I thought would be) a leisurely stroll to my gate. I’d grab a drink, maybe a snack, charge my phone and wait for boarding. How far could gate B49 be?

Pretty far. Forty-nine gates from security, to be precise. Or, 0.7 miles to be even more precise. Longer than the longest possible Salt Lake City airport trek.

I made it just in time to board, having worked up a proper sweat during the 20-minute power walk, and immediately begged the flight attendants for water.

Here’s the thing about the Salt Lake City airport — it’s actually great. It’s beautiful. It’s clean. The food options are vast and delicious (have you tried the Beecher’s grilled cheese?). The Lego store has sets not available anywhere else. The airport consistently ranks among the best for on-time departures and arrivals.

Yes, the walk is long. But relief is on the way. By October 2024, airport officials plan to open the central tunnel, which will offer immediate access to the B gate walk, instead of having to walk halfway through the A’s to get to the B’s.

It’s still not a walk I look forward to making with small children.

But I do appreciate that I’ll have stories of hardship to lord over the next generation who will, eventually, have a train that transports them from one side of the airport to another. When my children visit from out of state 30 years from now, I’ll tell them they don’t know how good they have it. “Back in my day, we had to walk half a mile to catch a flight!” I’ll say, and they’ll have no choice but to respect all that I endured.

And for now, I’m glad to have some perspective. We may have a hike, but our art installations have never killed anyone or foretold doom, Ubers can make pickups at the arrival terminal, our restaurants stay open past mid-afternoon and the very longest we’ll walk is still shorter than JFK.