Landing at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

What SEA is like

Seattle is a single-terminal airport with outlying gate concourses linked by an internal underground train. Plenty of transpacific flights use it as their entry point into the United States because the routing is shorter than coming in further south. Besides people visiting the city, a good number land here to join a cruise heading up to Alaska, or to drive north across the border to Vancouver. Those two plans raise very different coverage questions, and it is worth knowing which one you are on before you land.

On arrival

Turn the line on at landing; coverage here is good and you normally have data before leaving the aircraft. If your gate is on an outlying concourse, take the internal underground train back to the main building before immigration. The queue tends to flow better than at the big southern gateways, though it still stretches when the morning bank from Asia arrives together. After customs, anyone heading downtown walks to the light rail station, which sits over on the parking side and takes a fair stretch of elevated walkway to reach. Load the route in the app before you start, because that walkway is longer than the signs make it feel.

How far the airport Wi-Fi gets you

The Wi-Fi is free after a sign-in page with an advertisement and is time-limited like everywhere else. Through the main building it holds up, but out on the distant concourses it slows noticeably in the busy hours. What matters here is that the network does not follow you along the elevated walkway to the light rail station or onto the platform itself, and standing on an open platform in the rain is when you most want the ticket bought and done. A mobile line that already works removes that whole sequence.

Getting into town

The main light rail line runs from the airport station straight into central Seattle in about forty minutes, mostly above ground before dipping under downtown, where the signal stutters. If you take an app car or a taxi, allow extra at the ends of the day, because the corridor along the city is narrow and clogs easily. The ride in uses little data by itself. If your destination is the cruise terminal, or a drive north, budget more: the run up towards the Canadian border takes two to three hours with solid coverage on the American side, but the moment you cross, American coverage stops working, because the two countries are sold apart from each other.

What people ask about this airport

• The station walk is long — The light rail station sits beyond the parking structure, so allow time on the elevated walkway.
• Crossing the border changes things — Driving up to Vancouver means arranging Canadian coverage in advance, because the American side stops at the crossing.
• Rain slows the ground — In the wet months traffic and the car queue both stretch at once, so build in slack if you have a connection to make.