London Heathrow Airport

What were they thinking when they designed this airport? Having everyone walk a gauntlet of high priced shops through a narrow corridor pulling luggage is just plain stupid. Inadequate and confusing signage throughout. Complete lack of information kiosks. At the entrance to some of the escalators there were barriers that forced you to turn sideways to pull your roller board through. Seating in the waiting area only a very small percentage of seats could view the departure monitors. The degree of walking waiting and confusion is equalled only by some airports in 3rd world countries. This was one of the most frustrating and ill conceived airports I have ever been in. For shame England. Is the really the best you could do?

I have been flying through LHR Terminal 5 two to four times per month for the last 11 months and would have continued to do so for the next year. However my experiences at T5 have been dreadful - long queues for Border Control and Security. So much so that I cannot rely on two hours being sufficient to get from an inbound international flight to a domestic connection. Border Control staff are impassive and unhelpful but BAA staff are downright rude inefficient and ill-informed. Schiphol can manage 45 minutes gate to gate - are very friendly and obviously want my business. Likewise Newark. It is obvious that the Border and Security facilities at T5 are inadequate for the numbers passing through but a look at other airports would show that significant improvements could be made with little investment - moving a barrier here; moving a machine there; better training and utilization of the existing facilities and staff.

Landed at what was meant to be T1 on 1st July and it turned out to be T2 which isn't meant to have opened yet with no warning took a full 25 minutes to walk to immigration including coming to a huge flight of stairs with no esclator up which people just had to pull their luggage. Nobody was on hand to tell us it would be anything like this far (I'm mildly mobility impaired and have a limit of about 10 minutes for walking - had I known I might have been able to pace it better). Only one toilet passed in all this time which was a tiny '2 seater' with a big queue and in a poor state so just had to persevere. Usually I use T5 last time 27th June and next time 8th July which is generally marginally cleaner but also involves yomping huge distances gates which are 20 minutes away by the underground transit but only announced at the last moment and glacially slow queues for security and immigration where we are all treated like cattle. Even the escalators are slow. The one thing they have lots of is highly priced 'duty free' shops. Don't expect any bargains - it's like looking at sales on Bond Street: 10% off doesn't really help when the thing was marked up 50% in the first place. Few airports are fun but this really gives a poor impression of this country to visitors. Staff can make a huge difference - every now and then I meet someone helpful (like BA's Mr Law who helped me last month when my daughter was flying out to China from T5 and got downgraded by BA despite a full fare ticket) and would encourage them all (security staff immigration airline and service providers) just please to try to treat people as they would want their visiting granny to be treated.

Rude Security staff really awful avoid! Treated like a herded animal staff are just so rude! Avoid Terminal 3 at all costs!

Dirty crowded expensive and inefficient. A microsome of most things in London. Nicely reflects what to expect from England as a visitor.

This is the worst airport I have travelled through. I have travelled the world extensively and have never encountered such rudeness or disorganisation. We travelled with British Airways (who were fine) and were using Heathrow as a transit stop only (this time). Despite being in transit we waited in multiple queues and 2 hours into our transit with only 1 hour to go I asked a staff member "Are we going to make this flight". The response was simply "No". There was no help either to make the flight or to help us if we missed the flight there was no apology and there was no express queue available to people with short transit times. The staff in general were highly rude un-helpful and despite there being a lot of staff members they were standing around doing nothing. There was only one security check station open lots of redundant staff members and copious amounts of travellers standing around for 2-3 hours waiting to get through. Unless you are actually wanting to enter London do not transit through Heathrow CDG is a much better choice and the staff are delightful. If you need to enter London I would seriously consider flying into CDG anyway and then getting the Channel Tunnel Train.

Transferred from T1 to T3 on 24 May and T3 to T1 on 8 June. Bit of a nightmare - lots of walking backwards and forwards - down one long corridor and then back up to same one separated by a glass partition pretty unhelpful staff several of whom did not seem to know where to direct us. One person fairly aggressively claimed we were going the wrong way and wanted to turn us back when we wanted to enter flight connections (we did have the right to go there) - a less experienced traveller could easily have accepted his reprimand found themselves land side and had to recheck in and pass security and maybe missing their flight. Also inter terminal bus journey not comfortable or pleasant. Would only recommend if no alternative existed (or being the optimist if the new T2 makes things a lot better).

Not the worst airport in Europe but giving Paris CDG a run for the bottom place. June 26 the luggage system is down all officials concerned with acting stuffy and official not in helping. Security staff that confuse inefficiency with thoroughness BA their usual incompetent selves (is this what unionizing does to customer service?). A place to avoid at all costs! Plus most public space is taken up by expensive duty free a clear misnomer.

Arrived from US at 6.40 am on June 11 with no checked luggage on my way to London and didn't get through Border Control until 8.25 am. It took over 45 minutes to get to the sign that said that we could expect to wait 45 minutes from that point. There appeared to be only two agents checking in our very long line until 8 am when more agents arrived and after chatting obliviously behind the check-in stations for a bit started speeding things up. This wait time was even worse than the 1 hour+ wait when I visited in 2012. My last trip to the UK went through Heathrow and ended in Edinburgh where the Border Control experience was much more reasonable. This experience was disgraceful.

Whilst my own experience with Heathrow was relatively pain free I felt quite ashamed at what I was witnessing happening to other people transiting through the airport. I was connecting from a flight arriving at Terminal 3 to a domestic departure from Terminal 5. The bus transfer between the terminals was pain free and just involved a lot of walking. It was the Border controls and security that had me quite ashamed of what for some people is the only view they get of the UK. I moved through the EU passport border quite quickly but witnessed a large queue for the International passport border trapped with a very rude member of staff not explaining why they were there all of them getting visibly upset and all this staff member would do is tell them to be quiet and wait with no clear view of what they were waiting for. The border agency staff seemed stressed which isn't reassuring. Moving onto security well this was a shambles the staff were not explaining what some passengers should do and then being very rude if they went through the scanners with a belt on the bag scanners were incredibly slow with large build up of people waiting for the bag to come through the other side all the time the staff just seemed to stand there and do nothing looking incredibly bored like it was some kind of torture to be there. We all know Heathrow is under a lot of strain but sorting out the border and security would make it a lot more pleasant experience to pass through.