I am a local physician. I travel fairly frequently. I would love to support our local airport and I have tried. But, there are just too many issues that come with flying out of an airport this small that can really mess your travel plans up.
Stick with STL or MCI or even Springfield (SGF)
Love Columbia airport. So much better than driving all the way to STL or KC. Parking is close, the lines are short and people are nice. It is not a super fancy airport but it gets you to and from your destinations with a whole lot less hassle.
Their flights are often late, which once caused me make an emergency drive to the St. Louis airport to get to a conference in another state on time. They expect their customers to be tolerant and forgiving when they have a probem...
And neither an American representative I spoke with or a representative from the Columbia Airport will do anything to refund the money that I basically lost because when I booked 6 months ahead of time, I paid extra to fly from Columbia instead of St. Louis, but I wanted to support our airport.
There are some gambles involved in traveling, I get it. But you lose, a lot, at this airport. I recently booked flights to New York with my children 6 months ahead of time. Well, yesterday my return flight got bumped 3.5 HOURS earlier because of changes in Columbia’s schedule. I would have to have my children awake at 4 am to take this flight. I had times bumped before at major airports but usually by an hour or less.
However, when I arrived 30 minutes before a flight, the United clerk refused to issue my ticket, although the screen behind them said that customers only needed to be at the gate 15 minutes before departure. If I only need to be at the gate 15 minutes before departure, why couldn't they print a boarding pass before that 15 minute window? The United supervisor was rude and dismissive, and never expressed any sympathy. To the contrary, she smirked and seemed to enjoy dissappointing United's customer.
What a horrible experience at cou airport today with American Airlines flight. There employees are very racist and that is unacceptable (KYLE INGVASON). We are at the airport 50min before our local flight and the lady at the desks could not check in our bag for a stupid reason known to her, so she told us to step aside for her to finish checking everybody on the line to reschedule our flight. imagine (they have up to three flight going about the same time and she is the only one doing it) me and my husband patiently wait for her to be done for about an hour, She finally have to time to reschedule our flight and she told us we have to pay 150$ for her to do that. ( I was so surprised!). We try to ask her why because we were at the airport 50min before the flight, the plane is still there and people are still boarding at that time. She said we just have to pay or we can call the 1800 number for them to reschedule our flight. Another passenger was there to reschedule his flight because he came late, they were able to reschedule that guy without no extra cost but because we are black we have to pay to reschedule because she couldn’t check in our bag.
I will not be flying out of COU again. I would strongly suggest you stick with STL, MCI or SGF (St. Louis, Kansas City or Springfield), real airports.
We also had a totally separate issue with this airport. Our flight to Dallas was late for mechanical reasons and we missed our connecting flight for Columbia. Well there wasn't another flight for 18 HOURS! So basically we were going to be stuck in Dallas for a day and get home Sunday afternoon instead of Saturday evening. I don't know about you but its nice to have a little time to get settled after being away a week before heading back to school and work.
So I wasted $200-300 by paying extra to fly from Columbia, I’m not flying from Columbia, I ended up getting the flight and seat selection of flying 3 months rather than 6 months ahead of time, and American and COU act like they are doing me a favor by not charging me MORE to change my itinerary to STL so that I don't have to wake kids up at 4 am after a late night out.
You can’t trust COU to get you there.
The COU airport is also rundown with a horribly claustrophobic waiting area. Just what you want before getting on a plane for a few hours. No fresh food in the airport either.
This rating is not because of how small the airport is or how late the flights are. That is typical for a small airport (or really any larger airport). The problem with this airport is its flow of people. There is one TSA line for two gates. The TSA cannot adjust when a lot of people come to the airport at the same time, and the airplanes cannot wait. Because of this I missed my recent flight, along with 10 or 12 other people who had been there an hour early. It is not the airline's fault for wanted to make a timely departure but rather the time management of the TSA and airport staff. Best advice - arrive 2 hrs early, and use the restroom before you go past security because there are no restrooms once past security.
We ended up flying into Springfield that Saturday night from Dallas which still had MULTIPLE flight options into their airport from Dallas that night.
So another risk is that if you miss your flight to Columbia, you are going to get stuck waiting around for the next flight forever since they have so few flights.
So I had to change my entire itinerary 3 months before flying to go through St. Louis to get reasonable flight times. And, of course, on shorter notice my flight options and seat options are more limited than if I had booked out of St. Louis in the first place 3 months ago.
Columbia Regional Airport Cou is a US Airport based in Columbia, Missouri. Columbia Regional Airport Cou is located at 11300 S Airport Dr, Columbia, MO 65201, USA.
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