A recent USA Today clip by Matt Granite listed six things not to buy at the airport. One of those things was wifi. The 
recommendation was to instead find a Starbucks. That might be easy in some places but some airports are huge! If you belong to an airline lounge, you can get free wifi there. Lucky you! But if not, you probably don’t want to wander around looking for free wifi during your entire layover. To help, I put together a list of the Starbucks and McDonalds that offer free wifi in airports that typically charge for it.
From Airfare Watchdog’s list of available airport wifi I found all of the airports that charge or offer less than 45 minutes for free; then I put together a list of Starbucks and McDonald’s that offer free wifi in those airports. (I found this information by searching the airport addresses on the McDonald’s site and the Starbucks site. There may be more options beyond this, but hopefully this will help you in the search for free wifi in case you end up in one of these locations.
Obviously I don’t know the reliability and speed of the wifi at the Starbucks and McDonald’s, how crowded the areas get, or the plug situation. But they’re good options for those who don’t want to pay for wifi!
In my research I found another helpful site with additional wifi info. Also, here is an older USA Today story on airport wifi I found interesting.
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I will continue to update this list as I get more information. If you find free wifi that’s not included please let me know!
THE LIST OF AIRPORTS THAT CHARGE OR OFFER LESS THAN 45 MINUTES OF FREE WIFI. Below each airport is a list of Starbucks and/or McDonald’s that have free wifi unless noted otherwise.
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CVG has free WiFi across the airport. Since being de-hubbed by DL, they’ve really improved the airport. All flights are now consolidated into Terminal 3 Concourses A (Everyone but Delta) and B (Delta). Have not been in B recently but in A, there are lots of nice chairs and two power points per chair.
@AnonCHI–Concourse B is the same with the power ports and nice chairs. B is actually nicer than A IMO.
Tampa– TPA has free wifi all the time
CMH offers free wi-fi.
@Pam and @Flyer thank you for the updates. The graph is a list of ways to get free wifi for airports that don’t offer it, or offer less than 45 free minutes. Don’t worry, airports with free wifi are all on the Airfare Watchdog list.
MSP is in Minneapolis, not St. Paul 🙂