Awfully Wonderful: My Vexing 8-Hour Jeddah Airport Layover

I’m live-blogging my SAS EuroBonus SkyTeam Milion Mile challenge this week. Click here for background and route information.

There’s a paradox here and it drove me crazy like nothing on this trip has up until now. The beauty of the Jeddah Airport and the Saudia Lounge and yet the agony of internet so slow that I ended up wasting my eight-hour layover.

Layover In Jeddah Airport Marked By Beatufiul Lounge, Crawling Wi-Fi

Vexing is the right word here. First, the good. Wow, Jeddah Airport has changed. I remember my first trip to the Kingdom in 2010 and how absolutely awful the airport was. Well, it has come a long way and the new airport is very nice.

And the new Saudia Al Fursan Lounge is really nice, giving leading business class lounges of the world a run for their money (I’ll post a full review when I get home). The lounge space is tastefully decorated and there are amenities like a sleeping area, showers, and an extensive selection of food and (non-alcoholic) drinks that make it a very comfortable place to wait for your flight.

I had an omelet and barista-made coffee at 10:00 pm…I love it. The staff were great and the food was delicious.

Augustine loved it too…he was over-the-moon about the all-you-can-eat ice cream (bookmark that, for tomorrow…).

But, the internet…

There is an internet signal in the lounge, but the speeds reminded me of the modem days. Speeds were so poor I was not able to get anything done.

And that was a huge problem because this whole trip was predicated on my ability to use the layovers effectively to work. I had a job to do, not just blog posts to write, and I could not do anything in Jeddah because the internet was so slow.

And it wasn’t just the lounge wi-fi: the airport wi-fi was not better (it was worse) and my mobile signal (even though I had paid for a high-speed data package from T-Mobile) was no better.

The internet lagged like Joe Biden…I just couldn’t get it to function beyond a crawl that made it impossible to accomplish what I needed to accomplish.

Understandably, I was incredibly frustrated. Eight hours with very little to show for it.

But hey, at least I did not go hungry. The lounge is beautiful. The airport is beautiful. But the internet is horrible. There’s no excuse for that.