What maniac designed the international arrivals flow at the Atlanta airport?

Tony Forcucci
4 min readJan 29, 2024

Flow and economy of time is important when arriving into a foreign country airport, especially after long-haul flights.

  • Dubai airport — amazing.
  • Hong Kong airport — incredible.
  • Zurich airport — smooth.
  • Shanghai airport — flows.
  • Rome airport — hell, even the Rome airport flows well.

But whichever team designed the international arrivals flow at the Atlanta airport should come forth for a public hearing.

In most major city airports when you land you go through a fairly straight-forward process of landing, debarkation, going through passport control, customs clearance, and you’re out.

But not in Atlanta.

When you live in Atlanta and fly internationally out of, and back into ATL, your flight might take off from Terminal F (the new international terminal) or Terminal E (old international terminal).

You don’t know until the day of the flight. So you have to make a parking decision on the way to the airport — part at domestic airport or the international one. Mind you this is a HUGE airport.

You can park in the domestic airport, go through security and take the plane…

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Tony Forcucci

I share travel, business, and rational thought stories from experiencing a lot of the world up close. tonyforcucci.com