Bob A.
Yelp
I fly in and out of this airport several times a year without fail, and the more I experience other airports the more I appreciate what's good about this one here in my hometown. It's very clean and has a lot of dining and shopping options, in Terminal 1 at least. The price range is what you'd expect from food & shopping at an airport, but at least the options are there. I wind up spending time in the airport lounges as much as possible; there is an Escape Lounge which is nothing special, although it's better than nothing. There are also three Delta Sky Clubs; I've been to two of them which are really quite comfortable and stylish, and I'm told the newest one in Concourse G is huge and cool.
Terminals with as much traffic as MSP's Terminal 1 are normally divided up into multiple terminals. Here, there are multiple concourses which spin out from that central mall area. You might expect this to make the security process slower than it would be otherwise, but it doesn't seem bad to me. It makes the large airport feel smaller than it is. Terminal 2 is much smaller and has fewer amenities. Low-cost airlines such as Sun Country and Southwest feature over there, and it does feel like you're in the "budget" terminal. It is quite far from Terminal 1, so if you have to travel between them you'll need to find your way to the LRT connection. That's the city light rail, which is part of the Metro Transit system of the Twin Cities, but if you're just going between those terminals it's free.
This is a major Delta hub, due to their acquisition of Northwest Airlines in the 2000s. So there are quite a lot of direct domestic flights available here covering 40+ states. There is a respectable number of direct international destinations available as well; as I post this, you can fly directly to London, Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, Reykjavik, Tokyo, and Seoul, as well as multiple destinations in Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Service to Dublin was suspended during the pandemic but is all set to return in 2024. There are no direct flights to South America, Africa, or Oceania.
In my experience, the speed of getting baggage from plane to carousel is well above average. That almost-all-one-terminal characteristic doesn't seem to have a negative effect on that operation, but I think it greatly impacts the pickup process on the baggage claim level. During busy periods, it's awful down there. Picker-uppers should be prepared for that. The areas for app-based rideshare services are nicely, clearly segregated in both terminals. Both terminals also have abundant short- and long-term parking, in ramps that are visible for many miles across our otherwise more scenic plains.
I think a lot of people who have a long layover here like to pop over to the Mall of America. It's quite easy to do that using the aforementioned LRT. The location of the airport puts it about equidistant to the two downtowns, and I think that has worked out great for us Twin Citizens; if the airport were further East or West it would probably disgruntle half the metro. (Although if I lived in the northern suburbs I might feel differently.)
I think that if MSP wanted to be in the same conversations as world-class airports like Singapore, it would have to do impossible things like build zoos and movie theaters. But the level of efficiency and cleanliness certainly puts it to the level of the best airports in the US.