Best and Worst Airport Wifi

Airports: aggravating. Airports without wifi: nightmare.

Let’s face it — in terms of infrastructure asks, most of us would probably prioritize five-star wifi over, say, a five-bar phone signal. (That’s what Skype/90,000,000 other data-using telephone apps are for.)

Now, in your home, office or that one coffee shop down the street, you can control your wifi environment and remain captain of your ship. But when we travel, we relinquish control, and throw ourselves at the mercy of Boingo. That’s not good.

Which is why Rotten WiFi’s annual rankings are interesting, if not particularly useful: Maybe you’re flying through Little Rock’s airport, the top-ranked spot on this survey and the one that is named for Bill and Hillary Clinton. More likely, you’re not flying through it, and you’re not going to adjust your travel plans to hit it, even with that stellar wifi.

Next on the list: Tallinn, Estonia; Don Mueang International Airport (Bangkok); Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Chattanooga, TN; Singapore; Chiang Mai, Thailand; and Houston. For the full rankings, see here.

The good news: U.S. airports took seven of the top 20 places — in addition to those above, you’ll find Tampa and Page Field in Florida, Tulsa and JFK. Notably, though, our best-performing-wifi airports aren’t the ones that most passengers use (outside of JFK). Give us a call when Atlanta, Chicago, LAX and DFW — all of which see higher passenger loads than JFK — have stellar service.

Then we’ll have something to celebrate.

Meet your guide

Diane Rommel

Diane Rommel has written for The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Travel + Leisure, Wallpaper and Afar, as well as The Cut, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and McSweeney’s. She once drove from London to Mongolia, via Siberia.