You Might Have To Walk Over Two Miles To Reach Your Gate At This Crowded US Airport

Getting in your steps everyday is a great feeling — unless you're racking them up by racing through an airport to catch a flight. While it might just feel like a long trek because you're worried the plane will take off without you, at a few airports, you can really add some mileage. According to a report by Kuru Footwear, the U.S. airport with the longest distance to walk to get to your gate is Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, ranked the worst in America. This is an absolutely immense place, covering around 17,000 acres. (To put that into perspective for you, a single acre is around 75 percent of a football field.) The longest distance you may have to cover to get to your gate is an astonishing 2.16 miles. Compare that to the next longest, which is 1.62 miles at Washington-Dulles International Airport. The report shows the route from E Satellite near Terminal E, moving past Terminals D and C, to Terminal B.

What makes this a little bit funny is that DFW has added a LiveWell Walking Path in Terminal D where you can walk through art installations, which is about 0.7-miles long. To take a little bit of the headache you now have after thinking about that, there is a bit of good news. DFW dropped from the second-busiest airport in the world to the third in 2023. Hey, take those silver linings where you can get them. Plus, we always hear how good for our health it is to walk, right? 

That said, you don't actually have to walk that far. You can take Skylink, a free shuttle once you've passed security that takes you between all the terminals. It runs every 2 minutes, all day and night, and takes 9 minutes between the furthest ends. Outside security, you can take the orange Terminal Link van shuttle, which runs from 5 a.m. to 12 a.m. It's free as well. 

If you tend to get to the airport early, you might actually want to do this walk as you're going to be sitting still for your entire flight. Plus, while DFW isn't exactly a favorite of flyers (as we mentioned above), it ranks as one of the best airports in the country for food. You can have a seat and chow down at the brightly lit Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, or get your snack on at Cousin's Bar-B-Q, just to name a couple of spots. Plus, there are plenty of travel amenities to utilize and take advantage of at DFW. You'll find shopping boutiques, bookstores, Texas-related retail spots, and even higher-end stores in Terminal D (which you can blessedly take that Skylink to) like Coach, for example. 

If you need to keep yourself calm and relaxed so you can completely unplug before your vacation, you can get a massage or manicure at one of several XpresSpa locations around DFW. If you need some downtime or you have to finish up that last work email, you can find Minute Suites in Terminal D which are private rooms with a desk, a TV, a daybed sofa, noise-cancelling headphones, wifi, and flight info for around $55 for an hour, with an additional charge for more time. This location's Minute Suites also have paid shower services so you can arrive in style.