Barcelona Airport

An absolute disaster. We departed for the U.S. yesterday, and experienced a 2+ hour wait at passport control - passport control is after the ticket counter and security. There were no defined lines in which to stand, just 2000 people in a huge room trying to get to the 2 or 3 passport control agents not in an orderly way - miserable conditions with no helpful staff to guide folks along.

✅ Verified Review | What's good here? Nothing. Over 1 hour queue for passport control on departure. No access to a lounge, shops and restaurants from the E gates. Very inefficient service. No facilities for smokers. A third world experience that totally disappoints and fails to meet the high standards of everything else in Barcelona city.

✅ Verified Review | The customer service at this airport is pathetic. Not only that but finding security and/or information if you do not speak Spanish is quite the challenge. Then when you finally find someone that speaks your language they speak to you rudely. I was simply trying to find my luggage that has been in their lost and found for my full stay in Barcelona because Sata International lost my luggage and when they found it didn't return it to me so I was without my luggage for my 10 day vacation in Europe. Barcelona did not make me feel welcome in their country and I will not be coming back.

Airport staff were professional and polite. The check in time for baggage was satisfactory and the queueing time for security was good. However, better signposting for terminal 2C would have been better. However, the toilet cleanliness was inconsistent. The toilets in area R of terminal 2C were absolutely discusting. None of the soap dispensers worked and there was poo literacy on the seats in some cubicles. Terminal seating was available but not clean (an accumulation of leftover food crumbs over time).

The worst immigration ever! The queue hardly moved, was incredibly long and took hours to get through. The most inefficient immigration I have ever experienced and I travel to a lot of third world countries. Wow, absolutely shocked at how rubbish this whole experience was. Will never fly into this city again. Oh and it seems someone forgot to turn on the air-conditioning.

✅ Verified Review | I love Barcelona airport. Signage is very clear. When you arrive to the airport by car, the parking is good, there's plenty of parking lots. Then, at the arrivals hall, all is very new. The staff are very nice and they always try to help you. The security control is good, not too restrictive. There are info screens everywhere and the toilets smell very good. Big airport and a very good one.

✅ Verified Review | I am a Barcelona local and the waiting time to get checked luggage is always terribly long. Plus, staff use one air bridge for 4 different flights while bridges around are empty. Terrible place, horrible organization and unpleasant staff. Horrible welcome for foreigners. I am ashamed of this.

✅ Verified Review | An absolutely appalling airport all round, from organisation to staff behaviour. Arrived perfectly on time for a flight home today and ended up in what can only be described as a crowd riot. Absolutely shocking, no format to any queues, just huge crowds of people pushing each other trying to get through the passport control check after having queued for an extremely long time to check in just before this. Staff, in particular the passport control workers were extremely rude and unhelpful. I would suggest a serious meeting here in organisation skills and in customer service. It is completely and utterly unacceptable in such a busy airport.

✅ Verified Review | Horrible experience. Very rude employees. I arrived at the airport on Feb 18 2017 almost midnight. I was looking for the hotel that was supposed to be in terminal 1. There were no signs anywhere that led you to the hotel. I approached the information center in terminal 1. Two ladies were working that night. I have never met anyone as rude as these employees. They were very rude with answering my questions, I was told to go outside and just wait for the bus to take me to the hotel. When I told her the hotel was supposed to be inside the terminal she kept saying go stand outside and take a shuttle. So I went outside waited for half an hour until a bus came. It was midnight by that time, I was so exhausted and had to catch a flight at 7am. The bus didn't know where the hotel was and told me to ask inside. So I went back inside to ask the ladies again and as soon as the staff member saw me she turned her back on me and ignored me. I was so shocked that these women are working in the booth. They had no skills at customer service at all. I ended up going upstairs to see if I could just checked in early. As I was looking I saw another information center so I asked the staff that was working there how to get to the hotel. He did not know either. After looking everywhere I just gave up and just sat down and waited for my next flight.

This airport is very poorly managed. We had a 1.20 pm flight, my husband has mobility issues so he was in a wheelchair. The line to check in at the KLM counter was about two blocks long. We got in that line at 10 am and one hour later we were still on it. Many people who were on the 11.30 am flight to Amsterdam missed the flight because they had only 3 employees on the counters and they were extremely slow in processing passengers. Eventually, one other passenger told me to go speak to a supervisor to try and process us faster since I was pushing the wheelchair and my husband was having to "walk" the suitcases, one on each side of his chair. She was rude and reluctant (I am fluent in Spanish) but eventually she took me to a counter cutting the line and processing us. When we got to the security checkpoint, they told us they had issued two boarding passes in my husband's name and none on mine! I had to leave my husband at checkpoint, run to check-in counters and tried to find a supervisor to listen to me while other passengers were looking at me like I was trying to get ahead of them. Eventually I found an employee who took me to a counter and was given 2 correct boarding passes. After security checkpoint they took us to a concourse and the employee left us there and took the chair. Eventually another employee showed up with a car and took us to a place in our concourse where we waited to be called to the airplane. There has to be a better way to man the check-in counters. On top of that, employees are rather rude and do not try to make the long wait any easier. Barcelona airport has still a lot to learn to make itself attractive to international passengers.