Not Enough Places to Land

When travelers are asked to rank airports according to convenience, the winner is often Seattle-Tacoma International. Spacious and easy to navigate, Sea-Tac is the 23rd largest U.S. airport in terms of passenger traffic; it handled 14.4 million people last year. Passengers are whisked from the central terminal to outlying gates by a rubber-tired subway that travels at 26 m.p.h. The airport owes its roominess to a five-year building program, completed in 1973, in which two giant, remote terminals were constructed to accommodate jumbo jets. As a result, Sea-Tac has become a popular connection point for travelers flying to Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore. Seattle-Tacoma's record for on-time departures, currently 87%, falls short of the performance of such fair-weather airports as Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix, which often top 90%. But Sea-Tac is consistently above the national average, not an easy feat in the sometimes foggy Pacific Northwest.