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?

Rhodes or Heraklion on the way home. The Greek airports always schedule all the UK flights at the same time, endless queues (in the broadest sense of the word) for check in, then again for security then again for passport control. After about 4 hours you get through the queues to find about 30 seats and one cafe (on Heraklion anyway) to share between about 5000 tourists. Never mind, you can just go and get in another queue at the gate and then another for the bus.

It's probably not the worst, but Sydney international is always rammed at checkin and can be a nightmare. All the flight have 250+ people on them as they're long haul international (except NZ). And everyone seems to have about 3 massive suitcases with them.

In it's defence I have found Dublin to be safe, comfortable and easy to navigate.
On the other hand I was in Stansted after midnight with a tannoy saying last train to London NOW and luggage (from my flight) delayed so basically: choose between getting home and getting your luggage.

Recently I have found Bilbao uncomfortable. The prices were shocking. I took photographs they were so shocking (and I have lived in Ireland and Switzerland). It was also THE most expensive flight I have paid for despite booking months in advance.

Verona. The queues were so long. Security took too long. We only just made the flight.

I have been through Doha over 20 times and have never had to go landside during a connection (latest visit was about two weeks ago). You do go through security (usually - they will sometimes allow a flight to bypass if there was a late arrival, depending on flight origin) but, as long as you show your liquids, they can go through (duty free or not). Actually, I find them better about that than many airports (most make you go through security during transit - though, for many, it depends on where you're coming from)

Not sure what part of the airport you were in that was a monotony of nothingness, but clearly not the gardens and walkways or all the restaurant options or children's playgrounds.

Marseille - though there were building works going on which probably hasn’t helped.
Cologne-Bonn. Small-ish airport but took ages checking in at one terminal, security in another, then back to first for flight.
Düsseldorf. Hardly any seating, horrible, both land- and airside.

Favourite is Vancouver by a mile.

Antalya is the absolute worst

Singapore !! Chiangi

A million fucking miles between gates .. include a buggy and a couple of young kids and you have no chance of making a 3 hour connection...

Chicago O Hare, we flew in on an A380, and our flight shared a luggage belt with two other international flights. It was chaos, couldn’t get anywhere near to get our bags, was a complete shambles. Couldn’t get WiFi to get an uber to our hotel so ended up walking miles to get the hotel bus. It probably didn’t help that we should have arrived 30 hours earlier and hadn’t originally had an overnight stop planned.

That's good to know when my kids get older and I have to fly into the shit hole of Luton airport! 🤣

So true about Ciampino Rome. Plane landed at night. No taxis due to roads being closed. No information whatsoever. Nobody spoke English. Travellers outside the airport trying to share rides and bribe anybody to take them to their hotel in Rome at 3 am.

Edinburgh. Dirty and those wooden seats are torture.

Male in the Maldives. A shed with a couple of check-in desks. (Although the sea plane bit was pretty cool!)

Every other suggestion is amateur , for the professional airport hell there is no where to compete with Karachi.

The scene is set by staff on the national airline whose main function seems to be to sit at the back and amuse themselves without being worried by such mundane matters as plane safety.

Before you arrive the local newspapers are full of stories of people having their luggage robbed by baggage handlers and only finding out when they arrive at destination with suitcase full of newspaper , you cannot put an insurance claim in once you leave airport.

Arriving is like being in a sauna, hot and humid beyond belief .

The security is intimidating and scarey and I’ve been through immigration at JFK many times , they seperate male and females to really search you. Staff are monumentally slow and disinterested , everyone skips queues , it’s survival of the fittest.

The fellow passengers waiting in airport are intimating and the whole atmosphere is threatening , with females subject to a lot of staring.

You do not want to know about the toilets and general cleanliness/upkeep of the infrastructure.

I’ve only ever transited through Karachi , just as well as the city is not a safe place , the airport is bad enough.

Agree, massive queues for the TSA desks.
Las Vegas, we were flying Delta in Business and there's no Delta lounge which is surprising foe such a large airline.

Paris. I have no desire to ever return.

Been many times enroute.
Always had to go landside whilst waiting for connection.
Maybe your connections were quicker
I usually allow at least a few hours.

My dh the first time bought wine on the way through duty free on landing. We then went back to catch our flight and had to go through security again and the wine was taken from him. A guy behind had some lovely single malt taken off him. They have a shelf behind them to line up all the booze that’s confiscated from people like us that didn’t know.
I see it happen all the time to others since then too. Every time.

We ve never seen gardens, walkways or playgrounds. We wait in nothingness. Just one large space you can see end to end.

All that greenery only appeared a couple of years ago, almost certainly because of the prior nothingness.
If you’ve been 20 odd times you must have been before ‘all that greenery’ when there was just mega plastic sculptures because that’s all there ever was.

Frankfurt - nightmare for connections!

Would have said Chambery and generally avoid it, because it is a one belt cowshed operated with nothing but contempt for passengers, but the staff from the ski company and the airport were brilliant with autistic DD when we were last there and delayed. Found us a quiet space to sit and gave us advance warning of the fact we were about to be carted off to Lyon instead. Lyon, on the other hand, was horrendous - rude staff, huge queues, and wouldn’t make any effort to get the flight loaded despite crew hours ticking down.

Manchester. It’s poorly designed for the amount of people, and drinking huge amounts seems to be the way most passengers deal with it.

Baltimore. Unhelpful with autistic DD, huge security queues and a crappy lounge. Felt more like a bus station than an airport but as if they’d made slightly less effort than a bus station would.

On the other hand small airports can be delightful! I like Guernsey, and Newquay and Southampton are really easy. A few posters mention Naples, where the havoc is just to prep you for the city I think.

I've just been down the rabbit hole of checking out BHX and they seem to have stopped with the promises now, instead saying that building work will continue "for the foreseeable future"

I really shouldn't have expected anything else but it's beyond pathetic ...

Yes but it can't do it very well. Security backs up to the entrance stairs, no space in departure lounge. When you arrive back you need to wait 20 min on the plane for someone to bring steps to let you get off. Then 45 min wait to get through passport control in what looks like a portacabin with no working toilets for the entire tedious wait, I could go on ...

Luton is a proper shit hole.

LAX early 2000s.

It's just a tarted-up Aldergrove where I did the longest taxi-ing when we flew in on an RAF flight and taxied about 35 minutes to the military side, we were then told to disembark and move very quickly to the building for security reasons.

@JadeSeahorse surprised it took so many pages for it to be suggested, unless it's had a major revamp in recent years