The Best and Worst Airports for Traveling Surfers

"I did not fully understand the dread term "terminal illness" until I saw Heathrow for myself," said the UK playwright Dennis Potter. Surfers too have a conflicted relationship with airports. They can be the gateway to the trip and waves of a lifetime, or a hellish experience of missing boards, endless queues and escalating fees. Yet all airports are not created equal. Here we look at those terminals that always deliver, against the ones to give a wide berth. It could be the difference between the waves of your life, or starting or ending your trip in the depths of despair.

The Best Airports for Traveling Surfers

Gold Coast Airport, QLD, Australia

“I mainly live where I do because of Coolangatta Airport,” Steph Gilmore told SURFER. “It’s five minutes from home, they will put your boards all the way through to Indo or the States, and I know half of the staff by name.” Known formally as Gold Coast Airport, but universally as “Cooly Airport”, it handles six million passengers a year, or roughly the crowd at the Superbank. Being the gateway to the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Byron Bay rates it higher than most hubs. With direct links to all of Australia’s airports plus Bali, New Zealand and Malaysia, you can see why it's top of our, and Steph's, list.

Biarritz Pays Basque Airport, France

Upon touchdown at Biarritz Pays Basque Airport, you are less than three miles as the seagull flies to Cote de Basque, the beach in the heart of the beautiful Basque city. Less than an hour’s drive south is the culinary delights, large G&Ts and waves of San Sebastian. The same distance north and you can be surfing the famed beachbreaks of Hossegor. To the east, the Pyrenees mountain range provides summer walking and biking, and winter skiing. The tiny airport is efficient, with cheap parking and rare queues. Airports aren’t designed to make you happy. Biarritz is the rare exception.

Fuerteventura Airport, Canary Islands

A long-time European winter sun, surf and sea getaway, Fuerteventura Airport is a clean, efficient, portal to the island's reefs and beachbreaks. It gets added points for its capacity to deal quickly with oversized luggage (windsurfers have been coming here for thirty years) and being equidistant between the south coast’s tourist beaches and the north coast’s reefbreaks and beaches. Oh, and a cold beer costs a buck.

Changi Airport, Singapore

Changi Airport is regularly voted as the World’s Best Airport for food, amenities, service, communication and on-time flights. With 85 airlines, serving 210 cities in 60 countries, there is no surfing destination you can’t get to, though it is particularly useful for accessing all of Indonesia’s surf hubs, the Maldives and as a stopover from Europe to Australia. Is it worth choosing a flight just based on the quality of the airport? It might be if the airport boasts the world’s highest indoor waterfall.

John Wayne Airport, LA, USA

In the 2024 World's Best Awards, Travel + Leisure, Orange County’s only airport was rated by readers in the top 10 of all major USA airports. Reviewers described it in highly unusual airport terms like, “chill, easy, compact, and uncrowded” and the fast security clearance times, absence of queues and cheap parking make it a frequent-flyer favorite. Located just seven miles from Newport, not far to San Clemente and with direct flights to most USA hubs, plus Mexico and Canada, this is an airport that is Duke-approved.

Airports To Avoid

San Francisco International Airport (SFO)

The aviation review site Skytrax's recent judgment for SFO wasn't great. “For the majority of passengers, the experience remains poor, with transfer convenience and staff attitude being rated as particularly poor.” They added that inadequate staffing also increased the chances of missing connections. In 2022, another study found that to travel you needed to arrive 2 hours and 45 minutes before your scheduled flight and that SFO was the USA’s worst major airport to transit through during the Memorial Day weekend. Steamer Lane is close by and might be pumping, but you won't be surfing it in a security clearance queue.

Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport, Portugal

Lisbon airport’s location is incredible being right in the heart of the capital city, and only a 45-minute drive to some of the country’s best waves and incredible coastline. However, it averages one of the highest flight disruptions in Europe, and the waiting times for security, luggage and hire cars are often longer than the flight that gets you there. The appeal of Portugal’s waves and people will always trump the airport’s deficiencies, but it sure doesn’t make for a pleasant entry, or exit, to one of the great surfing and cultural destinations.

Honolulu and Maui Airports, Hawaii

A 2023 JD Power survey found that Hawaii’s two largest airports ranked near the bottom of all US airports. Passenger satisfaction across accessibility, security, retail, terminal facilities and baggage claim were rated poor. To that, we could add a low surfer satisfaction based on surfboard fees and damage. A big issue is that the Hawaii airports don’t operate from the state’s general fund, but use airline fees, airport businesses, and concessionaires for funding. This has led to expensive pricing and severe under-investment. The airport experience quickly washes off after a 100-yard peeler at Waikiki, or a 10-foot bomb at Sunset, and there aren't exactly many alternatives, but Hawaii's hubs are definitely in the "must try harder" category.

Kingsford Smith Airport, Sydney, Australia

Like Lisbon, you can’t fault Kingsford Smith Airport’s location. It is 15 miles from the Sydney Opera House, and close to all the famous beaches that make Sydney one of the great surf cities. In fact, there are incredible window views of the Cronulla reefs and the slab Ours on both take-off and landing. However, its inner-city location means it has run out of room. It can’t cope with the ever-increasing passenger numbers and the over-crowding, and was recently ranked in the top (or bottom) 10 for airports in the world for delays.