London Gatwick Airport

Having arrived from Istanbul on Turkish Airlines the contrast between Turkey and England was marked. The terminal at Gatwick is bland dirty and unwelcoming. The queues were long and moved slowly. Clearly not enough staff on. When we surfaced only one over priced taxi option was available. We had to wait 15 minutes for one to arrive. Could not get away quickly enough from this dreary airport.

Arrived at North Terminal at 00.10 hrs. No air bridge took 20 minutes to arrive. Immigration quick. Luggage abysmal arriving at 01.00 am. I spoke to BA desk who blamed lack of resource by Swissport. Desk operator said he had been on duty 10 hours and was dealing with baggage complaints throughout the shift. This just added insult to injury on the outbound flight BA/Swissport forgot to load our luggage which arrived at our destination 2 days later on next available flight. BA should take note as Swissport are getting them a bad name.

Seems the owners did not learnt a thing from the Christmas shambles. All the hard work in trying to turn the airport into something good is slipping away fast. The shambles awaiting luggage from flight from Palma to LGW North with Thomson on the 28/6. Landed at 15.41 - and after nearly 3 hours later - finally getting luggage. This is supposed to be an International Airport. Judging by these reviews this is becoming a regular occurrence. No need for a second runway as people/clients will take their business elsewhere. Have always tried to support LGW and would rather use than LHR. But this is the second shambles in a month regarding collecting luggage and surely the owners need to step up here and take action with these handling agents as people patient is beginning to wear thin. No wonder none of the major airlines will fly from here.

Seem to be constantly undermanned! No handlers available to connect power to the aircraft then a protracted delay (40 mins) for baggage. This was the same for both our flight and another Monarch flight due to no handling staff. The worst wait was for the oversize baggage for our buggy another 15 min wait. The one guy that was on shift must have been putting in the hours for his minimum wage that day!

Arrived into LGW NT at 01.00 Sat morning an hour and a half late. Despite being late had to wait 15-20 mins for ground staff to arrive. Then after winding our way around tatty corridors arrived at passport control to find it bursting at the seams. Almost an hour later went to get the bags and had to wait a further 20 mins before they arrived. All in all it took over 2 hours to get out of the place. Welcome to Britain in 2014. Compare that to Hong Kong where I've parked on the furthest stand from immigration passed through the airport onto the Airport Express and been in Central in under an hour. I've also been to 3rd world countries where the experience has been far better. When are people with some responsibility going to admit that the Airport is either badly run badly managed under funded over capacity or any one of a dozen more things that are probably also contributory factors? The only saving grace was that at 3 in the morning the M23 and M25 were quiet. Unless people in high places take some bold decisions that put the country first and stop pandering to various minority groups that swing their votes sadly nothing is going to happen and people forced to use this sorry excuse for an airport will see no change. I know a lot of good people try their hardest to make things work but the old phrase "you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear" is very apt some serious modernisation is needed. One thing the whole experience taught me was to avoid the place at all costs unless absolutely necessary. Mind you having read some of the other reviews here I'm inclined to think we got off lightly.

Arrived Saturday 28th June 4.15pm on a delayed flight (by 4 hrs) from Kefalonia (not Gatwick's fault but French Traffic controllers on the incoming flight). It was however easy enough through passport control. Then I walked into hell - in the luggage claim/collection area which looked more like a refugee camp in a war zone. Swissport the outsourced airport handling company is apparently as I found out from a passenger from an earlier flight not unloading planes or is unloading but not getting the baggage to the customers. No one from the Swissport organisation is around to explain - the lost luggage desk do not want to know. So all planes from Turkey Greece etc ie those airlines serviced by Swissport were affected so about 5-6 plane loads were affected when I arrived. It was chaos with elderly people fainting - (too few seats) groups of passengers demanding information from the lost baggage people as they were the only ones around - no access to water/drinks etc - it was like the third world. It was embarrassing to be British and I felt I had to apologise to to some Spanish passengers from Madrid who asked me what was going on and were clearly very distressed. There were rumours about a strike/go slow not enough employees. Who knows? What I do know it's bad for UK and it shows Gatwick has no structure to deal with this sort of thing and does not care one hoot for the paying customers they could at least have somebody in authority there to provide information. Problem they have is - as everything is outsourced nobody takes overall responsibility for customer care and operations. Eventually the police had to come down to restore some sort of order and a voice of reassurance to the 3rd world chaos. After 2 hours the baggage arrived. Who knows what is going on but it is a shameful and disgusting welcome to the UK.

South Terminal. Flew to Lesbos 14th June 2014 passed cases through security at 03.30hrs boarded plane at 05.00 which was due to depart at 05.35. At 08.50 we flew leaving behind 17 cases so that the Monarch airlines would not have to pay compensation only to the people without their cases. This was due to a lightning strike which affected the terminal and it was Swissport which could not get bags to the plane. 3.30hrs sat on a plane on the runway is no joke with only being offered half a cup of water after we had been travelling through the night. On the return journey there was no one there from Swissport to put the bridge to the plane so we had to sit on the plane for a further 20mins then when we arrived in the baggage lounge we had to wait a further hour for all the cases to arrive due to Swissport again. What a shambles for an International Airport. One of the airport workers told us that Swissport had got rid of all their long term staff and were now employing Zero Hour workers who turn up when they feel like it they also said that we were lucky we only waited an hour for our cases and some flights had to wait 3hours.

Arrived at north terminal on Sunday 22nd June no swissport agent to meet the plane from Larnaca so waited 5 minutes to get to gate then another 35 minutes for someone to operate the bridge so we could disembark. No trouble getting through immigration but then had a nearly 2 hour wait for baggage. Again no Swissport people to unload baggage.

What went wrong? Well: Toilets upstairs seemed to be occupied by people who'd taken long term leases. I was trying to get in for at least 20 minutes and of course by that time I wasn't the only one. When I gave up and went downstairs all the cubicles bar 1 were cordoned off with major repair work going on. Surely if the major facility on this concourse is going to be out of action you'd have staff directing people elsewhere? Security - why don't they issue clear instructions about what you can and can't take how you can take them and what you have to do. I don't know why I'm surprised and it happens every time so I don't know why I'm bothering to mention it. But having to rip various bits of clothes off at the last minute on a whim balancing expensive electrical gadgets precariously because they've got to go through separately and watching them disappear out of your sight finding that although you've adhered to the rules about liquids the fact that you've put them in the wrong sort of transparent bag makes you a risk well none of these makes for good karma. Finally London News or whatever WH Smith calls itself airside get your staff some training in dealing with customers. Just because somebody questions the need to hand over boarding card details to buy some wine gums doesn't mean you can take it personally.

Waited 20 minutes for bridge driver to arrive so that we could disembark our flight. Then 90 minute wait at Passport Control in a hot sweaty corridor that clearly wasn't designed for such purpose. I thought that I was going to pass out it was so uncomfortable finally arrived in the main Passport area to find that the drinks machine was out of order. Abysmal.