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?

Rockhampton

Miami. We were passing through. Both me and my husband have post graduate degrees and very well travelled and are native English speakers but we struggled to understand which queue we should be in and the staff were awful. Half the people going through are not native English speakers and goodness knows how they got through. They just got screamed at by the harried staff. This was November - not peak tourist season!
Barcelona was also a nightmare in that the gate you arrive at was miles from luggage pick up and they didn't allow pushchairs t be delivered gate side. I was pregnant, my son was not yet walking and I had two hand bags full of baby stuff and not a single person offered to help. I had to put my son down and let him crawl for a bit. Then at the taxi queue we were slower moving with my negotiating both pushchair and luggage and people just shoved us out of the way. The Spanish are child friendly? Not one bit.

Manchester was an absolute disaster

Taipei. Dirty stinking toilets and threatening signs everywhere warning that anyone found in possession of rugs would be executed. Didn't have drugs, obviously, but still set me on edge!

JFK is shit for such a huge airport.

Dar Es Salaam. Just chaos.

The best was the tiny little airport we landed at somewhere in Tanzania for safari. Just a grass strip and we had to circle a couple of times to allow the giraffes to move out of the way.

Also, Trat in Thailand. Like a tropical beach hut. The only airport I've seen that has no walls.

I try to avoid it at all costs.

But seriously. Can't they visit some airports anywhere else in the world and see how they're supposed to work?

Never been anywhere else where they can't cope with something as basic as putting your bloody luggage on your connecting flight.

And perhaps they could tell their immigration officials that it is a complete waste of everyone's time interrogating someone about the purpose and length of their visit to the USA when they are only transiting through and not planning to leave the airport (which you can see from their ticket) but thanks to you and your dumbass questions they've now missed their connection and have to stay longer than planned.

And also tell the people who run the Delta lounge in Atlanta that the whole point of the lounge is that you don't have to pay for your drinks.

Keflavik. It was fine until a member of staff loudly refused us the disability assistance we’d pre-booked, and shouted at me and my disabled then-17 year old in front of a crowd of about 200 passengers that being disabled was the same as being a small child and that we could join the back of the queue with all the families with small children. Yes we complained.

In the UK, definitely Luton.

Outside of the UK, Boa Vista airport in Cape Verde.

It has been rebuilt since then. Have flown 3 times, one of them being this summer. The staff are very friendly & helpful, the toilets are clean, the whole experience was 100%

We once had to stay overnight in Ennis, (close to Shannon) waiting for an onward flight to the USA. There was a huge hurling match scheduled for the next day. All the shops and restaurants were decorated, everyone was out on the town and we had one of the best nights of our lives !
I asked the Irish customs official if he wanted to see my passport ( pre-Brexit). he took a quick glance at it and said " to be sure, your lookin fine today". the USCIS officials are usually in a good mood too, they are hardly overworked.

Oh yes the seating areas at the departure gates for the UK flights are grim. Its always cold at 5am, and smell of aviation fuel But you can almost always get a good strong cup of tea. Trot on over to the International terminal and there is lots to entertain you.

Speaking as someone with a disability (so need special assistance) Kos is the best in the world. Their disability team is waiting for the plane to land, people with disabilities are quickly and efficiently offloaded via the ambilift, handed straight to ground support teams and whisked through the airport; and the same in reverse leaving. Compared to most airports where you are lucky if you are off the plane within an hour of landing, and then often dumped in a corridor to wait for people to provide assistance.

@LivingColour Went there a couple of years ago and they have not.
The only airport I’ve been where you check-in, then are asked to leave the airport and go to one of the bars/cafes/restaurants nearby as the area airside past security is too small to have people waiting.

I fly to Kos twice a year - I have friends there - and yes, airside is rammed with tourists, but I have never been asked to leave and have never heard of anyone being asked to leave.

That's the problem with an airport whose main flights are to party destinations 😆

Corfu before it was modernised.

Their system used to be get food and drink before you go through to the lounges to wait for boarding. Only they didn't tell you, not in English anyway and I don't read Greek.

So hundreds and hundreds of people went through security and into a tall glass fronted lounge area to wait. No noticeable air condition it was extremely hot and you were trapped until you boarded.

This was back in the 1980's.

I've been back many times and learnt to navigate the old system.
I checked in my luggage then sat outside on the grass sipping a drink until I headed towards security then onto the plane.

It's been overhauled and modernised. So now it functions well like any good airport. They just weren't set up for tourists in the 1980/1990's.

Forgot to mention Orlando's new Terminal C
It may be better now, but I used it when it had just opened and absolutely nothing was ready - even car hire had to be processed at a different terminal, involving chaotic shuttle buses and general angst (as if Orlando in its entirety isn't a major gateway to hell anyway)

And yes, Miami's a nightmare; I'm convinced all the staff are really auditioning for parts in the Flintstones

Santorini has been rebuilt. Much better now 🙂

Manchester. The security staff seem to have been trained to behave as if they're in the Stasi. They seemed to take a lot of pleasure in upsetting people.

The queue for security was well over an hour.

I live close to Shannon airport and nobody around here or anywhere else in Ireland says “to be sure”, lazy stereotyping at its finest.

In UK it was Aberdeen, overseas Helsinki. Both are built to a similar design where people get funnelled down long narrow corridor like spaces. Hellishly claustrophobic and not enough seats at the gates...

Yes I went to Santorini last year and the airport was unrecognisable from when I went there 20 years ago

As @MissScarletInTheBallroom you said to Dream,

Can't they visit some airports anywhere else in the world and see how they're supposed to work?

Never been anywhere else where they can't cope with something as basic as putting your bloody luggage on your connecting flight.

And perhaps they could tell their immigration officials that it is a complete waste of everyone's time interrogating someone about the purpose and length of their visit to the USA when they are only transiting through and not planning to leave the airport (which you can see from their ticket) but thanks to you and your dumbass questions they've now missed their connection and have to stay longer than planned.

"Why do you want to enter the States"

"I don't. I want to enter Guatemala/Fiji/Peru/Mexico but you're stoping me do that."

I swear TSA and immigration in the States have never actually got on a plane to another country themselves. And they cannot fathom a world where people don't want to sneak into the US and live there.

Please understand I would happily avoid the States forever and would never want to live there. Which is a shame, because as DD said, all the real people in the US are lovely. But they hire the arseholes (assholes I suppose) to work in the airports. Everyone else in LAX, from the lovely young man who gave me his seat on the bus, to the cleaner who rushed up to our gate, to the sweet older lady who explained the bus signs were all wrong and made sure we got the right one, all fab.

But TSA and immigration seem to want to keep you in the US when you are trying desperately to leave, all the while being annoyed that you want to come in at all. Very weird.

Yes it was like that the last time I went as well (2022). You can't even blame Brexit as the EU queue was only moving marginally more quickly than the "other passports" queue (and if the Brits had been in that one, it would have been slower). We got to the gate and walked straight into the plane - I have never done that before. But we left on time, everyone got the flight, so maybe there's method in the queuing madness - about 45 mins for security and 30 mins for passports.

And on the way in we had to wait 1.5 hours for our luggage. I've not checked in bags since, I just travel light.

Charles de Gaulle - planned by a sadist. Closely followed by Heathrow.

Stansted. Over an hour to " process " through security. 2 lines working - 5 or 6 unmanned. Nearly missed our flight despite being checked in for hours. The gates of hell. And it was always the rest cure alternative to Gatwick/ Heathrow?
Best : Kerry. If there's a plane on the tarmac , that's your plane !

Chamberry. Hideous.

I live in Cork and I agree. But perhaps we are being a bit harsh. Irish people say ' Sure' , usually at the start of a sentence. Just that . But non Irish ppl might fill in the bits they expect to hear? Sure you know yer self....