Bangkok Don Muang Airport

Customer Reviews

No Skytrax Rating
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Queuing Times 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Staff 12345
Customer rating from 117 reviews
4/10
No Skytrax Rating
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3/10

"DMK was chaotic"

(United States)

Not Verified | DMK is pretty much a hot mess. From the lack of public transit options for getting to and from, to the atrociously long lines at immigration, I will gladly pay for a more expensive flight just to avoid DMK. I realize that much of immigration is based on flight arrival times, but DMK was chaotic, as compared to BKK at. a similar time (1.30pm). We were through BKK and to Sukhimvit is about 1 hour, even with luggage pickup, compared to 2.5 hours at DMK, with only carryons. Never again.
Experience At AirportArrival and Departure
Date VisitDecember 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
8/10

"This is an excellent terminal"

(United Kingdom)

Trip Verified | This review is solely relating to the domestic terminal. This is an excellent terminal, everything works, power sockets, numerous shops and restaurants, efficient AC and, despite being busy there were plenty of seats. One issue - flight announcements. Not only are they too loud and frequent but the Thai is generally spoken too fast and the English is poor (hey-this is Thailand). The announcements from Air Asia were also made in a similar fashion in the long (400m) corridor on the approach to the gate waiting areas, pointless and noisy!
Experience At AirportDeparture Only
Date VisitDecember 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Airport Staff 12345
yes
3/10

"painfully long immigration queues"

(China)

Trip Verified | This airport still suffers from problems of painfully long immigration queues caused primarily by a lack of immigration officers. Also there seems to be a lack of controls on queues at Don Muang Airport meaning some devious people can cut in line. What is also annoying is the fact there are plenty of lanes open for passengers from ASEAN countries and Thai Nationals that are staffed with hardly any queue at all yet they never offer non-ASEAN or Thai passengers the chance to use these lanes during busy times. In the departures lounge there is a decent array of shopping and eating options which does somewhat help alleviate the pain of immigration and security at this airport. However many departure gates are overcrowded with insufficient seating and often passengers need to be bused out to the plane across the tarmac, which in my case took about 10 minutes because we had to travel right across the airport concourse. I therefore advise people to be very wary about using this airport especially during a major Chinese Holiday when there is a huge influx of Chinese visitors. If you have any issues with anger management, stress or anxiety then definitely don't use this airport.
Experience At AirportArrival and Departure
Date VisitOctober 2017
Type Of TravellerSolo Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
1/10

"Made a very bad first impression"

(China)

Verified Review | I went through the visa on arrival process as an tourist, it took me more than two hours at the end. The attitude of the girl at the immigration is unacceptable, she laughs at you once she found you made a small mistake and shouted if you could not understand her poor English. She would ask you to rebook the connecting ticket if your receipt was not in English! Deliberately made troubles with your address. You need to queue 3-4 times to get out. I would say this is my worst experience in the airport. There’s no way to make a complaint! Made a very bad first impression of Thailand!
Experience At AirportArrival Only
Date VisitNovember 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
1/10

"No order whatsoever"

(Vietnam)

Verified Review | Had to queue for over 3 hours to get a stamp for visa free arrival. No order whatsoever and with more planes arriving the queue was only getting worse. I will never arrive at this airport again. However in saying that apparently the other International airport has also been experiencing issues. Not great for tourism at all.
Experience At AirportArrival and Departure
Date VisitAugust 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
1/10

"4 hour queue at immigration"

(Thailand)

Unverified | The flight landed into Bangkok Don Muang at 1:20am on Sunday 6 August 2017, but my son did not pass through the immigration quques and exit into the greeting area until 5:30am. That was nearly a 4 hour queue at the immigration desk, along with hundreds (thousands) more other frustrated passengers. The Airport Authority of Thailand only refer to a hitch on a couple of days prior to this, on Friday and Saturday, but the situation continued on Sunday as well. Soon after my son landed there were another 6 scheduled flights to land within the next hour, and from the Arrivals Board they were arriving pretty much on time - meaning the queues would get a lot worse and they would probably experience a 5-hour queue wait. It was a bad experience and it will definitely put people off travelling through Don Muang and probably from travelling to Thailand as well.
Experience At AirportArrival Only
Date VisitAugust 2017
Type Of TravellerSolo Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
3/10

"immigration is a total mess"

(Germany)

Verified Review | Bangkok Don Mueang immigration is a total mess unworthy of an international airport. I used this airport several times for flights in Thailand and where I do not have to go through immigration on the way back, that was OK. But last time I came back from Singapore late in the evening, and I had to wait more than 2h30 in a completely disorganized queue to go through immigration. And now I hear that a few days later, the situation was even worse! Looks like both the airport authorities and immigration do not care about this situation. If they want to retain the status of "international airport", they need to increase the capacity for dealing with foreign passagers at immigration and organize the queue system like in Suvarnabhumi. In Suvarnabhumi the queues at immigration can sometimes seem impressive, but once you are in the queue, things progress steadily and in a well organized manner. And the immigration officers are efficient and professional. In Don Mueang, it's "dog eat dog" with people trying to cut the queue and switching queues to gain, especially once the big mainland Chinese travel groups arrive. And most officers at immigration do not care at all about the mess. Only 1 in 2 counters were open, but there seemed to be a number of officers available behind. So why don't they open more counters when there is such a mess? The excuse for the 4 hours wait last Friday apparently is 4 late arriving planes. They say they can only deal with 1000 foreign passengers in one hour. Four planes in Don Mueang, that's at best 600-800 passengers. This situation is most probably very detrimental to tourism in Thailand, a country that really needs it's tourism industry. Elsewhere, something like this happens, heads will start to roll. An arrival area such as this does not give a good impression of Thailand and certainly does not provide the feeling that you are arriving in a developed country which cares about the tourists bringing money into the country. Bottom line, next time I will plan a trip out of Thailand and back, I might still leave from Don Mueang as my wife lives close by, but I will definitely book a flight back to Suvarnabhumi where immigration works. Sorry Air Asia, but there are competitors that fly to Suvarnabhumi at quite competitive prices. Arriving in Suvarnabhumi I might have had the time to go from Suvarnabhumi to Don Mueang and back at least twice during my wait at Don Mueang Immigration.
Experience At AirportArrival Only
Date VisitJuly 2017
Type Of TravellerCouple Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages N/A
Airport Shopping 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
1/10

"queue for immigration was very long"

(Thailand)

Verified Review | It was my worst experience at an airport. My flight from Bangkok Don Muang was delayed and there is no smoking room. Food and beverage prices are high and quality is bad. When I arrived the queue for immigration was very long and no one tried to manage this . Some tourists told me they waited for 3 hours.
Experience At AirportArrival and Departure
Date VisitAugust 2017
Type Of TravellerSolo Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
1/10

"no airport staff that was willing to help"

(Thailand)

Verified Review | Don Muang Immigration queues - nightmare! (Arrived and departed in June). You are very likely to miss your connecting flights, if you booked a different airline. There is no co-ordination at the immigration hall. There are nowhere near enough staff to process the huge waves of people that are backlogged. There are empty immigration desks, with staff walking around in the back, not wanting to acknowledge or look at the massive lines they were not helping to process. The lines were wall to wall, super long, and not moving. They even closed desks when there were clearly like a thousand people in line. I am a very cautious planner, and had budgeted a connecting flight over 3.5 hours after landing and I still just barely made my flight. I had stood in line looking at my watch patiently for an hour. Moved about 15 people, in a line of probably 70-100 people. The immigration hall was full of a sea of people, people cutting lines, walking up and down trying to cut or see why nobody was moving forward. I even saw two immigration desks close down in the middle of the mayhem. Yet, the head honcho guy was just smiley, ignoring the very unhappy crowded lines in front of him, and just chatting up the rest of the staff at different desks that were trying to process the people. He was distracting them. After standing in line for 2 hours, going nowhere, I started getting nervous. After another 30 minutes, I had to literally beg some people at the beginning of the line to let me through, otherwise, I would miss my flight. At first they didn't want to let me through, because they had been waiting probably longer than I had and thought I was skipping all the way to the front after just arriving. I showed them the chronometer on my stopwatch which was still running which showed 2.5 hours and counting (the check-in desk for my connecting flight closes 45 mins before departure.) And they got that I had also suffered the hours of wasted time along with them. Thank you to those two families. There were no Airport staff that was willing to help with my timely predicament, even when I was able to grab someone. They spoke English, but talked to other staff, and no one knew what to do. They just said get back in line, or you have to ask the people in front. So, I did just that, without their assistance. I vowed not to go through Don Muang Airport again, if I can. No one seems to care if arriving passengers make connecting flights or not.
Experience At AirportArrival and Departure
Date VisitJune 2017
Type Of TravellerSolo Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages N/A
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no
1/10

"It was a horrendous experience"

(Singapore)

Unverified | The airport immigration is a disaster! Arrived at 12.30am and did not clear immigration until more than 5 hours later! There were no queues! It was just crowds all pushing towards a handful of open immigration counters. From the end of the crowd, you can't see which counters are open and which are not. You can only push forward until you are close to the front before you can see that the counter is closed and have to head towards the nearest next counter, pushing together with the crowd. Everybody was hot and sweaty. It was a horrendous experience. Any other country, Nepal, India are all so so much better than this. Totally hate the experience! You see people fainting, hear kids wailing. And I have to add, the immigration officers were lazing around, instead of opening more counters or managing the crowd, they just walked up and down, chatting, laughing instead of doing anything. I will never ever fly into this airport again! Totally inhumane place! Utter disgrace for Thailand!
Experience At AirportArrival Only
Date VisitAugust 2017
Type Of TravellerFamily Leisure
Queuing Times 12345
Terminal Cleanliness 12345
Terminal Seating 12345
Terminal Signs 12345
Food Beverages 12345
Airport Shopping 12345
Wifi Connectivity 12345
Airport Staff 12345
no