How To Sleep in an Airport

You've made your reservations, you've turned up on time, you've taken your shoes off when the nice security people asked you to, you've provided your id, your ticket, and a sample of skin off the back of your neck -- are you home free for your airplane trip? Of course not! You may get held up.

In that case you need to know about Sleeping In Airports at http://www.sleepinginairports.net/ . (I tried to cover this site last week but it repeatedly timed out -- I expect it got overwhelmed by snowbound travellers.)

This site does exactly what it sounds like. It provides information on sleeping accomodatations -- with an eye toward both comfort and safety -- in airports around the world. Reviews come from contributors to the site.

At the moment it's got over 2700 listings for airports everywhere, with geographic navigation starting on the left side of the page. I started with USA, which gives a table of states and then airports covered in those states.

I went to Chicago O'Hare. O'Hare has 27 reviews. Reviews start with a giant icon which makes the slant of the review abundantly clear (it's either a happy face, a skull-and-crossbones, or both for a more ambiguous review.) Reviews list both the date the experience took place (looks like most of them occured within the last four or five years) and the date it was added. Because the site has several contributors the quality of the contributions is uneven. Most of them are pretty good.

There are other things here besides airport sleeping reviews. There are tips for how to sleep in an airport. There's the results from a 2003 survey on airports, with some odd questions (best/worst bathroom, etc.) There's a small collection of great/terrible airport photos (those chairs in Osaka look very snoozable.) And don't miss the "listing of the week," which highlights a weird/hysterical airport experience every Sunday.

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