Dubai Airport

Twice a year I am flying into Dubai International Airport Terminal 3 and things are getting worse. The queues at immigration seem to grow and the immigration officials are getting more indifferent every time I land at the airport. They take their time and spend more time chatting with colleagues and in mobile telephone conversations than in stamping passports. Most of the time a simple good morning or even a friendly nod is to much to ask for. Incoming flights are getting delayed by the endless circles planes have to make over the Persian Gulf before finally being able to land and outgoing flights are regularly delayed by 30 to 60 minutes even if everyone is onboard and the doors are shut. The message from the captain is always the same: "Due to the fact that it is an extremely busy time air traffic control has asked us to wait because there is no space on the runway." This doesn't change no matter what time of day you are flying. Emirates must be the most delayed airliner in the world. There is clearly a capacity problem at Dubai International leading to massive delays every time. I love to fly Emirates especially the A-380 but if this problem isn't solved I will choose another company for my future travels just to avoid Dubai International Airport.

Can describe DXB in one word - dreadful. Business class passenger transiting from LHR to SIN and the whole experience was appalling with transit taking almost 2.5 hours. Staff surly and quite frankly useless. First time flying Emirates and will be the last despite faultless service on both legs of the journey but I simply could not tolerate the DXB experience any time soon.

I fly to/from DXB regularly. The queues at immigration are the longest and worst regulated I have seen and I visited over 50 countries. I currently hold an e-gate pass to avoid this problem but before than that I had to wait an average of 2-3h every time I arrived to Dubai. Sometimes the staff modify the queues and people that arrived hours after you pass in front of you and you can't speak with them as they are inattentive and rude. The immigration officers are extremely relaxed and not concerned abut the situation and several times I have seen them using their cell phones while they work.

Terrible passport control services in Teminal-1. We waited almost 1.5 hours to pass through the passport control. They simply make people suffer. We travelled to HK and Tokyo before arriving to Dubai. There were more passengers at those airports but finished passport control so quickly but Dubai airport is simply miserable. I think they just focus on improving Terminal 3 for Emirates Airlines but ignore Terminal 1 and 2 which are in a bad condition. Our luggage belt was not known when we got out we just found our luggage on the floor somewhere near luggage bands. Outside the building was worse. Lots of people but a very narrow sidewalk - big mess!

All in all the best parts are the shopping and the Emirates Lounges. The worst parts are the wait at immigration the long walks from the gates to the baggage hall and the signage hassle when you need to change your ticket.

Airport was not to be compared with the 5 star airports like Hong Kong or Singapore. You get 30 minutes of free wifi yet if you clear your cache memory of your device you get another 30 minutes and so I had 7 hours of internet. It takes 1 minute to register not so difficult. It was adequate for transfer.

Agree with some comments here - avoid transit of less than 2 hours like the plague - it's stressful at the best of times. Singapore to Dubai / Manchester in middle of night (when I think it is busiest at DXB) stacked then 20 mins on buses to terminal - don't sit at back of A380 otherwise you will be on 4th or 5th bus (if you are economy) long queue for further security train to other side of terminal - generally leaves you with 15 minutes spare. For a huge airport toilets are lacking with big queues - top tip go onboard before getting off and avoid that situation. Seats lacking - tip is sit on floor or pay for lounge. Other than that folks it's ok for breaking up journey for East to west west to East with good range of flights going in for that reason I will keep using.

Please activate the Fast Track cards. They are pointless to have if you don't have separate Fast Track queues. The queues are a mess. We were lucky to have enough time between transfers else we would have been scrambling to catch our connecting flight. What's the point in being a Gold Member of Emirates?

Both in and out of Dubai airport we had to circle for over half an hour due to heavy traffic making for a very concerning rush to catch our ongoing flight we also had to be bussed to the far outskirts of the concourse to catch our flight home to the UK. It appears that the airport is not able to cope with all the additional flights as a result as Dubai becoming the hub airport for several airlines such as Qantas. I will try to avoid it in the future.

My fourth transit through Dubai with Emirates and it may well be my last - masses of people trying to get through security and only 2 stations operating. Emirates hands business class passengers a fast track card but the airport doesn't operate such a facility. No one around to enforce the lines for the stations people pushing from all directions resulting in chaos. Will try Qatar/Doha next time and otherwise resort to Changi again.