London Gatwick Airport

I have not been to London Gatwick Airport for several years and visited recently to take my sister and brother-in- law to the Airport and pick them up two weeks later. I understand that LGW is no longer owned and operated by BAA but is now owned and operated by an American Company who are responsible for the recent revamp. What the new owners have created at least Land Side in Departures is awful. Not many seating areas and they have got rid of most of the places where you can sit and get a reasonably priced meal. You are now left with just a couple of very and I do mean very expensive restaurants: £9 for a hot dog!! What a rip off. There are now no shops Land Side and I understand the Airport Information Desk is to be abolished. The Airport Information Staff all appeared to be of foreign decent and their uniforms looked tatty and dirty and the ones I approached for information where simply unable to answer my questions. I am not at all impressed with the new make over / revamp. It was far better when it was under the ownership of BAA. I cannot comment Air Side but from reading the reviews here it would appear that the new owners have even made a total mess of that area. Something is clearly wrong with Arrivals as the Information Flight Arrivals screens advised that my sister's flight had landed and it was almost an hour later before it advised that the flight was now in the Baggage Hall and them almost another hour later before my sister and brother-in-law came into sight in the Arrivals area.

Going through security is not a good experience - you have to go upstairs (and down again afterwards) - presumably to maximise retail space. Also there is a problem if you're 'patted down' or sent through the body scanner - the tray with your valuables has now gone through and anyone could pick up your phone/tablet or take your handbag - not a good experience. Then when you get back downstairs you're taken on a long detour through retail but unlike IKEA there's no cut-through. Do they want you to feel a valued customer and offer you a user-friendly experience or are they trying to get you to spend money? It's definitely a lot worse than it used to be.

A needlessly stressful experience which will make me think twice about using LGW in the future and flying regional instead. Checking in for a flight to Edinburgh the airline's computer system crashed for approximately 30 minutes during which time the increasingly long queue of passengers was kept in the dark. All in all it took me one hour to check in for a domestic flight; so it's a good thing I arrived with time to spare. Our flight was delayed by the fact that there was an insufficient number of dispatchers available (according to our pilot) so we had to wait on stand until one became free thus delaying us 45 minutes. On the return leg dispatchers were again unprepared for our early arrival and had left a flight of mobile stairs blocking the gate so we were delayed in disembarking the aircraft too. The pilots on this particular airline had no qualms in strongly hinting at their frustration with the handlers. I live closer to Southampton and will probably just pay a bit extra next time in order to avoid London.

Flight to Canada on 2/09/2014 from South terminal and return on 9/09/2014 all I can say about this terminal is that they have created a multi million pound dump the management seem only interested is getting passengers to "shop" by having to walk through the duty free to get to the seating areas the smell / stink of the perfume counters is enough to make you choke with the fumes. The walk to the gate is a joke as they seem to be at the furthest end of the terminal there are many international airports who try to give passengers a fairly good airport experience Gatwick South terminal is not one of them.

Tuesday 2nd September. Just flew in from Dalman airport in Turkey. Arrived at Gatwick south terminal and what a shambles! You have 300 hundred people trying to access passport control with one small girl directing passengers to the new e-passport system. Couldn't go wrong? Umm yep literally 1 in 15 people was able to use it it simply does not work! Most people fail and go back into another queue. You have three people who are sat behind a desk who are meant to be supervising but do nothing voiced my concern to this desk only for the staff to say the system works when clearly pointing out right in front of them it does not. Wont be flying from Gatwick again.

Arrived with easyjet from AMS at the North Terminal satellite. This has very long walk to the terminal including going over a bridge but I rather enjoyed the novelty (I was rather hoping that a plane would taxi under me). E- Passport worked fine - fortunately it was a quiet time. I have a gripe about the lack of water fountains - luckily I had been able to refill my water bottle at Schiphol. I don't know if the airport wants to force to you pay for expensive bottle water or if its an oversight but please do something about it if you don't want to annoy your customers. I also found the passenger information in the South terminal confusing - screen give a check in location for each airline but I couldn't find anything to say if a given flight was operating on time or find any details of codeshares. (You can probably guess that you should check in at Virgin if you are flying Delta but its not clear). Overall not a bad airport.

Travelling out of Gatwick and travelling in on our domestic flight were fine but returning from the US passport control at Gatwick South is ridiculous returning to your home country should be straightforward yet despite the whole family having e-passports we could only admire the fantastic new automated machines (which we only saw a handful of people utilise) as our children cannot use them. I understand there is some sort of child protection issue which I can appreciate but why can they not have a more appropriate system to ensure you are not made to feel unwelcome by having to join a longer line than visitors without British passports?

Flew into Gatwick airport from Orlando on Sat 16 August. Great flight but tiring. Long long trek to passport control with 2 small children only to join a queue of hundreds of people. When flying into the States there is a lot of extra security which I personally welcome but a US citizen does not have to join the throngs unlike us when we are trying to get back to our country. There was a line for Channel Island passport holders why not for UK citizens? Yet another way that British citizens are treated unfairly. There was no extra visible security. You need to look at the way the States run their airports!

Mixed experience. Travelling to Barbados the outbound security check was very swift all systems manned and minimal queues. As this was peak summer the eateries were incredibly busy with in some cases no seating available. On our return we encountered several problems. Firstly the aircraft landed 30 minutes early and the pilot announced that "another aircraft has taken our gate" - surely a scheduled arrival with 300 passengers cant come as a surprise! After a long trek to passport control we encountered massive queues. None of the e-passport gates were working and the booths were undermanned. It was irritating to then have an airport employee shouting at the queue to "move along quickly and hurry up".

Arrived from Edinburgh on Sunday evening (3.8.14) We were already running late. A full flight load of Passengers filed off the plane only to be trapped for 25 minutes in a narrow corridor surely contravening Health and Safety Laws. A young man from another Airline tried to let us out but didn't have security clearance. He was at least able to phone Security for us. Security eventually arrived and opened the doors directing irate Passengers to email their complaints to the Airport! Browsing on the computer I notice this isn't the first time that incidents of this kind have happened.