Worst airport you have been in

[disappointed101]

Travelling through BHX this evening. Looks like a building site, no staff to be seen at check in, then a poor guy turns up apologising for lack of staff. Security an absolute mess, lots of staff having a lovely chat whilst the queue moves at a snails pace, nobody taking control. Awful. It’s got to be up with the worst experience I’ve had. Luckily our flight is delayed due to fog, else we wouldn’t have made it. What’s your worst experience in an airport?

Toronto. Dreadful, dreadful airport. Also, LAX and Manchester T3.

On the other hand, Orlando International terminal 3 is quite nice, can’t fault Calgary and I love Palm Springs airport.

Hurgarda in Egypt, 'security ' wouldn't give us back our passports until we paid them.

Travelled from Miami last year, that was rubbish, minimal seating, very few food outlets, we were delayed and were there hours.

Then stop coming here.

Apparently the parking in Dublin is going to improve when the big off-site car park that closed in Covid is going to reopen. https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/1218/1487182-dublin-airport-carpark/ It's not going to help with the queues inside the airport though. Or the M50, which is invariably immobile when I need to drop off or pick up from the airport.

I think it really depends on whether you’re arriving or departing. I love departing from most of the London airports but i bloody hate passport control at Gatwick or Heathrow. I was in the family queue with the heating ramped up to maximum a few days ago and it took over an hour for passport control as 90% of the travellers seems to have small kids. You could see half of the kids trying to strip off in the queue they were so hot. 🥵

Corfu was great arriving, pretty rubbish leaving and I’ve found a lot of smaller airports to be like that.

Worst airport I’ve been to however was Delhi. I needed to get a taxi as a lone female and was surrounded by about 40 men and it was terrifying. It was 20 years ago now but a lovely American couple had seen and effectively took me under their wing and got me to a safer part of the airport. I still ended up having to pay a bribe to someone on route to the hotel and I should have organised a proper transfer.

Basel. Swiss efficiency my eye.

🤣🤣🤣
I love your airports @DreamTheMoors

Did 30day student air travel ticket.
As many flights as we wanted for 30days
We went in and out of Cincinatti a lot!! It’s a real hub isn’t it. Never got to see that city though.

It's getting better. the older terminal (forget which one, but it's got the tiny little circular bar/restaurant type area in the middle) is shit though.

Frankfurt - security put their hands inside my bra when the wire caused the wand to beep. Guy with a gun shouting in German about where I got something from an inch from my face. Couldn't get me out of there quick enough.

You just reminded me we wanted to go to France and ended up in Switzerland. Lost 1h trying to go back to the same airport. Different door by car

Yup, you beat me to it, I was going to say the exact same.

Gladly if it means not having to deal with TSA arseholes!

Rhodes must have had a face-lift as was there last year and we were aurprised at how smart it was. Good food options - their gyros restaurant was fab.

Corfu wasn't great I agree.

They were incredibly rude to me. I used to work in customer service so I'm well used to speaking to rude people, but they went a level beyond. I couldn't believe they still had a job!

Mine, too! I'm surprised no one mentioned it earlier!

Manchester is appalling. The rudest, laziest staff I’ve ever come across. We actively avoid flying out of there now. Newcastle is the complete opposite. Very efficient, polite staff. Always a pleasure.

Genuinely surprised that Kos gets so many mentions here. I’ve been there quite a few times in the last few years and it has usually been absolutely fine. Clean, modern, efficient and with polite and friendly staff.

But, I’ve almost always been there outside the main holiday season and I suspect it could be very different then. In fact I know it can be as I did once fly out to the UK on the Saturday of the last weekend of the UK school holidays and that was a bit different, although still not that bad.

One of the problems is that it does not seem to have been designed with brexit in mind so passengers to the UK get shunted off to queue for passport control down an overcrowded corridor. You can hardly blame the Greeks for that though.

Anyway, here’s Kos airport in late November. (There was one cafe open.)

I remember JFK immigration halls even have signs up warning passengers that the officers might not be as polite as you would hope. They made my seven year old cry barking at him.

Bordeaux Billy Terminal (departures) ... basically a cowshed, no facilities, no air-conditioning ...just awful. Just next door a beautiful terminal for Air France and every other airline not going to the UK 😩

I cannot agree with this, admittedly the main airport is awful but the sea plane terminal had open sides and gorgeous views of barefoot Australian pilots taking off from the lagoon.

To answer the thread, my vote would go to CDG.

Same with my son who was also 7! It sets a really bad tone for your trip, I don’t know why the US doesn’t sort it out.

DH is a pilot and says their air traffic is appallingly rude to British pilots as well, they don’t give clear instructions either. He says he’s always relieved to get back to Heathrow controllers!

It’s strange because I found people in the states really friendly, this just gets you off on the wrong foot.

JFK New York is abysmal. Piss poor shops, facilities and food. I spent five hours there and it was such a drag. Paid 14 dollars for a tragic sandwich. Same crap 'Hudson News' on every walkway, each with tiny, expensive stock.

Heathrow is utter heaven by comparison.

Another one for Birmingham. Only use it as it's local and easy to get to, but OMG, it's such a dump right now! Flew out to Amsterdam last Friday and only just made the flight despite getting there 3 hours before flight, due to the queues.
In comparison, Amsterdam on the way back on Monday was amazing. So clean, queues moved so fast and everyone was so polite.

I haven't been to Elounda in years, even though it's my favourite destination due to Heraklion airport. Waiting for the new one being built. Always go to the Chania end of the island now.

I thought Copenhagen was awful when I used it recently! It looked lovely but we spent 2 hours in queues so couldn't enjoy it. We'd checked in online so thought we just had to bag drop so queued for that, only to be told (rudely) that we had to get a bag tag first, effectively checking in again so went and did that. Then a massive queue for security. Then another massive queue for passport control (why do passport control to leave a country?!) There were constant calls out for people who were late to the gates but it's no surprise really when you make them queue constantly!