Airports can be joyous places where couples, friends and families reunite and rekindle, having spent weeks, months and years apart. There’s nothing more heartwarming than welcoming home that special someone, but when it comes to farewells, saying goodbye is a much harder task.
Bidding adieu is an emotional experience, we all want just one last kiss. It’s a challenge made more cumbersome with strict drop off zones and parking areas. With Valentine’s Day coming up, KAYAK.com.au compared airports globally to see just how long – in free minutes – that final passionate embrace can last before security shows up to move things along. Vital information for lovers – but very practical information for all travellers. While the time allowed to ‘kiss & fly’ is never enough, the analysis shows that some airports are more romantic than others.
In Australia, the days of a long-lasting, lustful send-off are long gone, with free parking time heavily restricted and drop-off zones carefully policed. Airports in six of Australia’s seven capital cities keep love on the down-low, with just two free parking minutes allowed for goodbyes. Want to look longingly into a loved one’s eyes and reminisce about good times gone by? Forget it! A Casablanca-style farewell is almost impossible on Australian shores, with just three of our airports – Cairns, Hobart and Broome offering travellers more than two minutes in the drop off zone. In fact, Broome may not be one of our 10 largest airports, but it’s well worth a mention for providing a whopping 120 free minutes – a possibly amorous or awkward situation for lovers.
Further afield, love is not so lost. The research revealed Hong Kong International, Tokyo International Haneda and Palma de Mallorca as some of the most romantic airports around, with a generous 30 minutes of free parking permitted. Rome’s Fiumicino airport allows 15 minutes of quality time in its aptly name ‘Kiss & Go’ zone. Joining Rome in the 15 minute bracket are Dubai International, Phuket International, Prague Václav Havel and Copenhagen Kastrup, underlining the latter city’s status as one of the happiest places on earth.
Paris may be the city of love, but travellers at Charles de Gaulle need to keep that impassioned goodbye to a concise 10 minutes in the drop off zone. Much like in Australia, at major American airports such as New York’s JFK, San Francisco International, and Los Angeles International, goodbyes are a mere formality, with barely enough time for departees to disembark their vehicle before it is promptly ushered from the drop off zone.
Here at KAYAK we like to look at travel from every angle. Love may be in the air, but it’s also on the ground, particularly in airport drop off zones. We love to help you plan and manage your travel better, and in this case, we’ve used our insight to assist with planning airport drop offs while also providing a few tips on squeezing a little more romance out of your next farewell.
Main image credit: ©IB photo/shutterstock.com
Also Read>> Love Is In the Air(plane): How to Spice Up Your In-Flight Experience
