El Paso Ranked the World 12th Ugliest Airport By Travel & Leisure Magazine

Travel & Leisure magazine recently released a list of the World’s Most Ugliest Airports and some how the El Paso International Airport made the list:

1. JFK International Airport – New York, USA
2. Charles de Gaulle – Paris, France
3. Sheremetyevo International Airport – Moscow, Russia
4. Heathrow Airport – London, UK
5. Washington Dulles International Airport – Virginia, USA
6. Narita International Airport – Tokyo, Japan
7. Linate Airport – Milan, Italy
8. Lynden Pindling International Airport – Nassau, Bahamas
9. Ngurah Rai International Airport – Denpasar, Bali
10. Sofia International Airport – Sofia, Bulgaria
11. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport – Atlanta, USA
12. El Paso International Airport – El Paso, USA

Hat Tip: Christina Goes

Most of these airports I have never flown out of, but I can agree with JFK and Heathrow making the list.  However, I was mystified by how LAX didn’t make this list, which is not only one of the ugliest airports I have seen, but just one of the worst overall.  I actually do what I can to avoid flying through that airport even if it means a longer flight time. I am surprised Narita International Airport made the list as well.  Narita is not the most sightly airport, but it isn’t that ugly either.

Anyway I am a frequent flier out of the El Paso airport since I live in El Paso and travel often for work.  So seeing El Paso make the list at #12 surprised me as well.  El Paso’s airport is not ugly and is actually one of my all-time favorite airports. Here is what the magazine had to say about the airport:

You are unlikely to mistake El Paso International for any other airport on the planet. Arguably that’s a good thing. The terminal is an apparent attempt to blend regional style—southwestern adobe, more or less—with…something harder to identify. (That domelike copper roof belongs where, exactly: on an old train station? a Greek Orthodox church? in Paris?) Inside, fast-food outlets and ticket counters are dressed up in southwestern drag. But the pièce de résistance lies at the airport entrance. Dedicated in 2007 and purportedly the world’s largest bronze equestrian statue (36 feet tall), it depicts Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, who reputedly gave El Paso its name, on a rearing horse. However, de Oñate’s special talent was massacring Indians, notably some 800 residents of the Acoma Mesa, and is, as a result, politically troublesome, so the statue is now simply called “The Equestrian.”

Judging by the above picture what is so ugly about the airport?  It is a brown adobe color because of the city’s southwestern geography and the copper roof doesn’t look that bad in my opinion.  Plus the copper is representative of the now closed copper industry in El Paso.  Here is a picture of the Juan de Oñate statue that the magazine didn’t like:

Juan de Oñate is hardly the only early colonist to have a spotty record with his treatment of Native-Americans and yet we have plenty of places named after Kit Carson for example.  Juan de Oñate is hardly reviled in El Paso as the author claims when the Juan de Oñate Trail that runs between El Paso and La Mesilla, New Mexico is a popular driving course on the weekend due to its wineries, farms, shops, and restaurants along the way.  El Paso residents who the vast majority are of Mexican backgrounds take pride in the Spanish past and the people that protested the statue were mostly Native-Americans from the Acoma tribe in New Mexico.  Here is a good New York Times article about the statue.

Anyway this listing of the airport by the magazine is making headlines on the El Paso news with locals strongly disagreeing with the magazine.  I to find this Travel & Leisure article very misleading because El Paso International Airport is hardly one of the world’s ugliest airports.  Now calling El Paso one of the ugliest towns in the US, well that is a different story.