London Stansted Airport

Have used Stansted for a number of years and sadly every time it just gets worse. I detest walking through the shopping mall, offered samples of perfume, after shave and alcohol, I preferred the old way if I want something I would buy it. The queues on the way home through immigration were massive, why? At least 6 not working desks, staff not interested in assistance, just backwards and forwards like sheep, so undignified. On average over an hour from plane to bus. then you have to wait for your case. Stansted airport sadly money, money, money but no service for travellers.

We used to like Stansted Airport. You had the same experience as Gatwick - check in, security, reasonably relaxed duty free and food area, plenty of seats, enough time to get to the gate. Well, we will not be using this airport again. In fact it will now be a condition of future holidays that we don't have to use this complete nightmare. From the staff shouting at you at every stage, the swab testing of my five year old. Then we get to the shopping mall. This will be where they have to go back to the drawing board - an endless queue of humanity shuffling through an endless line of shops, but nobody shopping. Stansted management - after taking ages to go through security, most people's first priority is to eat. Then you can think about Duty Free. But no, you have to do Duty Free first then gamble on getting some food as you get perilously close to your departure time. So the big problem for the retailers is that no one is prepared to stop. Or, like us, they are so staggered at the rigmarole that we were subjected to that we just hightail it out of there ASAP. Then we got to the gate. We were herded into a metal tube between the gate and the plane. For 15 minutes. This was once known as the corridor to get to the plane. It is now a holding pen for the animals formerly valued as paying passengers. They shouted at us to split into 2 sides. I have no idea why as when we started moving we went into single file. Completely unnecessary. Arrival was another completely unpleasant experience. Massive queues, not enough staff. A familiar pattern for Stansted. The passport control guy took an inordinate amount of time to check us, a family with 2 small children and highly unlikely to be up to anything. The last hurdle - the long stay shuttle. Luckily we got the front of the queue because the bus took 20 odd minutes to arrive and the queue behind us was massive. A lucky escape there but in future we will make our own luck and fly from anywhere but Stansted Airport.

The airport was well organized but some waiting and dining areas were not properly clean. Queues for the passport control and for the x-ray machines were a bit too long for my taste. There are enough places to shop and keep you entertained until your flight leaves and if you are arriving, there are lots of exchange offices and ATM to provide for your money needs. Strangely I couldn't find a single place selling SIM cards. Information is adequate and the airport is well served by trains and busses. I didn't try the aiport Wi-fi system but I believe there was free Wi-fi internet available.

I flew EasyJet from Stansted to Ljubljana and back. The holiday was great, in huge contrast to the airport experience both coming and going. I have a knee replacement which of course activated the alarm on passing through security. I explained the cause of the problem and was subjected not only to the expected 'frisking' activities, which are fair enough, but was also forced to clamber onto a high step unaided, which might have been hard enough for some people without impaired movement. My knee suffered strain as a result, which took some days to wear off. I have never been required to perform this evolution before, and the member of security staff appeared not to have the slightest awareness of the difficulty he was causing. On finally clearing security I found the departure lounge to have inadequate seating unless you were prepared to buy food or drink. An enforced tour of the shopping mall in order to reach the departure zone was an added annoyance. The train to the departure gates was overcrowded. Passengers were allowed through the gate only to have to queue uncomfortably for 30 minutes on the corridors to the aircraft. Conclusion: you are not treated as an individual or even as a human being at this airport, except possibly as a target for humiliation. On return from Slovenia, I was faced with an automated passport checking procedure which I hadn't previously encountered. There were notices explaining what to do but they were very small and as you were continually moving up and down the endless rows of queuing people you had no chance to study them. At the check-in, the system persistently refused to accept my passport, and while that may have been due to my own lack of experience, the situation wasn't helped by my being continually shouted at by one of very few officials present, in this case one whose English I could not understand. This was the only personal 'assistance' on offer, and it was worse than useless. The sole advantage the system appears to offer is that of saving the airport money on wages. Eventually I was directed to the one desk which was staffed by a live official. The whole experience was, again, totally dehumanising. This airport has gone down the spout since I used it last. It's the nearest of the London airports to where I live, but after these 2 really horrible experiences I shall never use it again. The MAG Group which owns it puts out very self-congratulatory guff about the improvements it's making. Should be about the money it's making, because there isn't the slightest evidence of user-friendliness. What a way to welcome people to, or back to, England. Go elsewhere, it can't get any worse.

Used to love travelling from Stansted in the past, now I suggest you prepare yourself for an ordeal. MAG have turned this into a pit of horrors. Ok with the long stay parking and bus, the problems started as soon as you are inside the place, we required assisted travel (had booked this online) for my very elderly father and having got him a seat, I then joined the queue to arrange for his wheelchair, staff really doing their best but overwhelmed with people, some who had no idea what they were doing so were causing much longer waiting times at a completely inadequate sized office for that job. Queues at check in and security were as expected, but this time, without too much of a wait, then you have to walk through the "airport shopping experience". This is one of the most hideous and sorrowful things MAG have done to the place as you walk past countless shops (I react very badly to perfume so hate this part) until you reach the hall which was cramped with very little seating about so forcing you into an overpriced food outlet were we paid well over the top for hot drinks, or doing like others who had taken to sitting on the floor. On our return had no real problems as it was a delayed return flight and we were the only ones going through customs etc. This is an Airport not a shopping mall MAGS. Bring back the old simple Stansted please or I will consider other airports from now on.

✅ Verified Review | Easily the worst airport I have been to on five continents. The signage at the long-stay car park was intermittent at best - which meant it took me forty minutes to locate Zone M, where I'd been instructed to park. Check in was painless because I'd done this online but then I queued for another forty minutes at a very undermanned security. I was still unruffled, thinking I had plenty of time to get to my boarding gate, however, I found I still had a 1,165 metre walk through a ludicrous shopping mall that no-one else seemed to want to be in. I have mobility problems, which meant that this walk - the longest of any UK airport - took quite a while. Guess what? I missed my flight.

Outgoing from London Stansted: Queues for security checks were chaotic, with insufficient chanelling - this process took an anxious 40mins. Incoming: Ryanair flight delayed 20mins, arrived after midnight; no frills, no disembarkation - at least not for 30mins - due to "ground staff being thin on the ground". About half of e-passport gates closed. 30 mins to get through. Overall, 90mins from late arrival to car in short stay blue car park, half of the actual flight time, with another 3hrs driving ahead of us. Ryanair saved us money, but not enough to persuade us to repeat this Stansted experience.

Awful experience at London Stansted. Overpriced car parking, crowded transfer bus (with unintelligible driver announcing stops). Chaotic check in process - crowded, small screens etc. Ridiculous walk through shopping mall past every shop before departures. I expect that the next step MAG will put in place is to divert people through the individual shops Ikea style. Nowhere near enough seating in departures forcing people to use the restaurants no doubt (which are far more expensive than their off airport branches). Security was slick in our case, and on returning the border agency had their act together.

A ghastly experience at London Stansted. Why do we have to run the gamut of the shopping mall and eateries to reach the departure areas? Hot, overcrowded, stinking of multifarious perfumes and greasy food and super overcrowded. On the return journey leaving the airport took longer than the flight. Waiting on a stuffy plane for the buses, crammed in and eventually dropped off at the terminal, a wait for the bus to the long term carpark miles away, the bus which crawled around at almost walking pace. All the time treated like inconvenient cattle. Disgusting for a fairly new airport. Avoid like the plague.

London Stansted is setting exceedingly low standards. The journey to the airport with National Express was no problem and dropped us off at the Bus Station which is a short walk to the terminal. Then at the entrance you are faced with a queue of people trying to work out which check in desk to use, this blocks the entrance to the airport. Some clever person decided to place the monitors right inside the door. We managed to find the check in desks for our flight, and the staff were excellent, fast, efficient. Security is another area where the airport goes downhill. We had booked fast track but found that we were been mingled in with normal travellers (yet another con by MAG to extract more money from travellers). My cabin bag was selected to be further examined, this should have been a painless experience but due to the total lack of professionalism of the IC2 security officer who was more interested in chatting to a female colleague. He then had the nerve to demand that I unlock the bag without even a please or thank you. After finding a jar of coffee which I by mistake put in my carry on he just throws the case in my direction for me to repack again. Yes, I understand that the job is a thankless task but common manners cost nothing? I did mention this to one of the supervisors/managers and he did not seem the slightest bit interested. Now you have to run though a shopping mall where you have every area trying to force you to buy their products, and you have every alcohol stand trying to force to taste their product and purchase a bottle at a reduced price. If I want to go shopping there are the likes of Lakeside and Bluewater close by. (Maybe a suggestion is to have a route which does not include a trip to a shopping mall). Once though the shopping mall you have a good choice of places to eat and drink (a plus). We had to use the monorail to get down to terminal 1, again no problem the trains are every 30 seconds and you do not have the cheesy announcement’s like Gatwick. We were able to find our gate and the signage in Terminal 1 was excellent. Once at the gate the 2 check in staff appeared and an elderly gent from a company called Air Tanker (who look well past his retirement date). We were able to observe the loading and unloading of the incoming flight. Well it would seem that the team who were unloading the aircraft were working at a speed which a snail would have moved at a faster pace. In fact, it was painful to watch. Boarding time came and passed and we were still at the gate, at about 1515. The gate staff allowed us to move on to the air bridge but we were then held by the elderly gent from Air Tanker for some reason best known to himself on the air bridge. At 1535 he did allow us to board the aircraft.