Top Five Most Bizarre Airports

This list is limited to airports which I've visited.

1. Kansas City International Airport (MCI)
This airport consists of three rings, each with only one floor. Ticket counters, baggage carousels, and gate lounges are all intermingled with one another in a lateral arrangement. When the airport was designed, you needed to walk only fifty feet from the curb to be at your gate. That ease of access changed when security procedures were mandated. Now, each gate lounge is a separately enclosed holding area, most of which lacked restrooms until recently, with its own security lane. As such, the airport is a nightmare for transit passengers, who likely must re-clear security to get to their next plane. Passengers who arrive early are similarly trapped, unable to shop or visit concessions once inside the gate area.

2. London City Airport (LCY)
The oft-forgotten airport of London, City Airport is situated in the Docklands area, east of downtown. The ticket counter area is no larger than a high school gymnasium. The general waiting area for departures is scarcely larger than the lobby of a large law firm. But what makes London City Airport the most bizarre is that its runway is infill sandwiched into a narrow body of water, with no adjacent taxiway. Therefore, planes landing away from the terminal must come to a stop and taxi back to the terminal along the runway before any other plane can land or take off. Needless to say, the airport can only handle turboprops and small regional jets, and there are no jetbridges.

3. Palm Springs International Airport (PSP)
Once you clear security in this airport, you end up outside. While most the individual gate areas do consist of small, walled-in, air conditioned rooms, the main "concourse" of the airport is an outdoor patio, replete with a putting green, cafe tables, and lounge chairs. Part of this patio is covered by a tall, white tent. There is no mistaking the fact that you're in the middle of the California desert when you sit outside in the warm, dry air while waiting for your flight.

4. Charles De Gaulle International Airport, Terminal 1 (CDG)
Terminal 1 of Paris' airport is a concrete donut that encloses a depressing looking garden area. You check in on the first floor, take an inclined moving sidewalk through a space-station-like glass tube to get to passport control, and then travel through a long, dank, underground corridor to reach your departure gate area. Upon arrival, you come back through the underground corridor, clear passport control, then go up a different moving sidewalk through a tube to reach baggage claim, which is atop the terminal.

5. Kansai International Airport (KIX)
Osaka's airport is a sheer monstrosity. The airfoil-shaped terminal is over a mile long, end to end. It requires an internal people mover to get passengers from the ticketing area to the farthest gates. But what makes Kansai Airport most bizarre is that it's constructed on a man-made island in Osaka Bay several kilometers off the coast, connected only by a rail and highway causeway. And by the way, it's gradually sinking into the ocean.