London Stansted Airport

Entering Stansted security area is to be greeted with staff who are unacquainted with politeness or people skills. Commands are barked: 'Stand there', 'Shoes off', Raise arms'. There is no vestige of politeness whatsoever. Entering the departure area is to enter hell: a seemingly unending, high-price, gaudy shopping mall staffed by bored assistants. Bored because no-one was buying any of their expensive tat. Sandwiched in the middle of the mall are the passengers - hundreds upon hundreds of us, if not thousands, many with nowhere to sit because many were sprawled out sleeping across 3 or 4 chairs. There was even a queue for the men's toilets. This area was very seriously overcrowded. I will avoid Stansted in future and I would advise anyone else to also.

We hadn't used Stansted for many years but remember it as a modern, relatively efficient and easy to use airport. We used it recently for a Ryanair flight to and from Dublin. It is now dirty and very badly run. The distances you have to walk in such a small airport are ridiculous. We will never use this airport again. Reluctantly giving it one star.

Returned to Stansted just after midnight 7/8/16 in good spirits after an amazing family holiday. Headed off to pick up our car at Meet and Greet, only to be met by chaotic scenes. Families camped outside on the pavement and grass, the office heaving with irate customers trying to pick up their cars. Many had been there for hours, the 3 staff were overwhelmed, unable to answer questions or give explanations as to why they did not know where customers cars or keys were. No managers were brave enough to put in an appearance. Anger boiled over to the point where 5 police officers were called to try to defuse the situation. At one point a member of staff ran off in tears. There were also customers in tears, babies and children crying and some sleeping on the pavement. More and more people were arriving to add to the mayhem. Random names of customers were sporadically being called out who were bussed to an off site car park to search for their own cars. After 2.5 hours we had had enough, in our party were our 2 grandchildren. Staff could not tell us where our car was or give us any idea how long it would be so we were advised to get a taxi home for which they would reimburse us and they promised to deliver our car to our house this morning by 9am. They noted all this in their records. Guess what? Surprise, surprise 9am came and went no car. The number they gave us to call couldn't take anymore calls, voice mailbox full. Advised to ring back later. The other 24 hour number we had on our paperwork rings and rings, no answer. After waiting in the 13p per minute main Stansted Airport queue a member of staff tried to help. He said he would contact the meet and greet manager and see what he could do. He called us back but had drawn a blank the manager could not tell him where our car or key was. As luck would have it our neighbour works at Stansted and was able to go and search for our car, which he found. His wife very kindly drove me there and we met him, he was able to locate the key and took me to the car. If it hadn't been for him I don't believe we would have our car today. When we booked we actually didn't mind paying a bit more for a service that we thought would be quicker and more convenient, how wrong we were. Please think very carefully if you are planning to use this service which is run by Empark. As for the airport agree with comments about the awful duty free you are forced through, insufficient restaurant seating, queues too long through passport control. Instead of being an airport we enjoyed travelling from it has become an ordeal due to the greed of the operators.

✅ Verified Review | On our outward journey from London Stansted, check-in was surprisingly quick, calm and efficient, wonders never cease! The so called 'Tax and Duty Free shops' accost you before you can get into the proper airport lounge area. Once there it was difficult to find empty seats and the seats were not that comfortable. Lots of food places to chose from but very busy and queues everywhere. Coming back we were dreading the queues for Immigration but guess what, there were no queues. They actually had nearly all of the automatic gates working as usually they only have less than half of them working. Biggest problem the 'Meet and Greet' parking. What an absolute dismal, upsetting and chaotic scene that was. I had to wait over an hour and a half to get my vehicle. What's the point of paying for a premium service when it would have been cheaper and easier to park myself. Others had been there 3 and 4 hours. Apparently the owners MAG wanted more profit so they started 'block parking' all the vehicles right up close to each other but in no apparent order meaning you might have to move 5, 6 or 7 vehicles to get one out. Give the Meet and Greet (and the Meet and Greet Plus) a very wide berth and make alternative arrangements as this situation does not look likely to change soon.

What a joke and to be avoided at all costs. The airport is overstretched and cannot handle the number of flights. Now let me expand on this statement. My experience yesterday evening was not the best, far from it and I now remember why Stansted is an airport I try to avoid at all costs. It is now the airport management that are at fault but the cowboy outfits they have who operate has ground handling agents. The company handling my flight last night were a bunch of cowboys. Check In/Bag drop only two desks open to deal with 3 flights? After the check in staff nearly got lynched for the length of time it was taking. A so called member of management appeared and opened another 3 desks. Surely the ground handling company have sight of the load sheet and knew that there were 3 full aircraft and two desks could not be expected to cope. There were also 2 school parties trying to check in as well. Security very good, painless and quick. OK being a seasoned traveller I knew that I had to have the laptop out of the bag, belt. watch off etc and maybe I was in a queue which was seasoned travellers. The staff made eye contact, and smiled but most all did bark orders and had manners. Full marks and a credit to the airport. From security you have to run the gauntlet of the duty free shops before you appear in the main part of the terminal. The new style food court is very good and you have a good choice of places to eat and get a drink. Again if I wanted to go shopping I would of got to Bluewater or Lakeside, there is no good bookshop at the airport maybe one would be interested in taking a spare unit. The departure gate number meant that I had to use the monorail to travel to the gate. It was pleasant and nice not hear cheesy announcements like LGW have. LGW have had airline sponsor the Monorail between North and South. Now the experience now goes from bad to disgraceful and proves that the worlds worst ground handling companies are operating in London Stansted. The aircraft landed on time the in coming passengers de planed, and the passenger's who were waiting to board waited and waited. The flight despatched appeared and made a phone call, and we still waited and waited the time is now 2020 and the flight is due to depart at 2030. At 2022 a single member of staff appeared to attempt commence boarding the aircraft. Hence the aircraft took off 20 minutes late. Full marks to Manchester Airport Company for allowing cowboy ground handling companies to operate at London Stansted Airport.

The departure lounge is one endless shopping mall in which air travel is a secondary concern to that of extracting every last coin from its captive guests. Departures gates are hidden by the obscene array of sales outlets and the hoardes of aimlessly wandering travellers just looking for somewhere to sit or information about their flight. Arrivals is no better an experience. When you arrive in passport control the queue management barriers force you to walk backwards and forwards several hundred yards to reach the new state of the art digital passport control system and guess what? Computer says no! It might save on the wages and pensions of immigration officer but it sure helps to increase the queue time. I travel from Stansted because its close, I used to like the airport but I sure hate with a passion the greedy inefficient beast its become.

We returned from our family holiday from Montenegro to Stansted yesterday. We waited in the passport control queue for over 90 minutes, nearly missing our next flight home to Glasgow. This airport is a mess. The customer experience is dreadful. I will try to never travel through it with my family again if at all possible.

There have been some truly awful reviews recently of London Stansted. Here are my experiences travelling out Friday early afternoon and returning mid evening Sunday - both times when the airport was presumably pretty busy. Outward I didn't have to check a bag, but did note that there were around 15 people queuing for easyJet bag drop and around 25 for Ryanair. Nobody could have had to wait for more than 10 min max. Security was a breeze - less than 10 min end to end, plenty of perfectly pleasant staff. Yes the compulsory walk through duty-free is tedious, but it takes less than 2 mins - I can live with that. The seating area did look a bit small but at no time was there any problem getting a seat due to the constant turnover of people. There is every conceivable choice of catering and retail outlet easily accessible here. My Ryanair flight left from gate 37 which involved taking the transit - was fast and easy. Return flights from Ireland are bussed to the terminal as there is no passport control, however I did note that queues were minimal for passport control. Having arrived at the gate at 1915 I was able to get the 1945 Stansted Express train with ample time to spare. Changing at Tottenham Hale on to the Victoria line I was at Oxford Circus at 2035, which I thought impressive. In conclusion, this airport does seem to have issues at certain times but my experience was good. Certainly comparable to and a lot better than many European airports recently used.

My first visit to Stansted following it's redevelopment. Security has been relocated away from it's previous "landlocked" location at check in, and is now found at the back left of the terminal. From my experience, this change has worked well, as it allows one to by pass check in and go straight through to departures. Additionally, there are now more security lanes open, making the whole process more efficient. In saying this, I do agree with the comments regarding the walk-through duty free - MAG have failed miserably to create an efficient shopping route to the departure lounge, and instead, have chosen to force everyone to snake through a long narrow corridor full of shops with reps constantly spraying perfume at you. There is no logic whatsoever to this new layout, as there is barely enough space for people to walk alongside each other, and it is very difficult to get back to this area against the huge surge of passenger traffic. The new store is a disaster zone, as you'll often get people pushing and shoving with large bags in order to catch last minute flights. It must be a horrific experience for those with young children. However, once you've snaked your way out of duty free, the range of shops and restaurants in the departure lounge has improved dramatically since the BAA days, and from what I saw, there seems to be more seating than before. However, whilst I appreciate this, the fact that MAG have crammed so many shops / restaurants into a small space means there is much less natural light than before, giving you the impression that you are waiting in a cave. We also had a very pleasant surprise when we flew with Ryanair from satellite 2 (gates 20-39 accessed by the TTS), which was unusual. This area is much better than the main Ryanair "shed" (gates 40-59), as it offers much more space, seating and even airbridges. Ryanair (and other airlines) should make more use of this facility, as it is very much underused and often empty (there were only 3 flights operating from there when we flew out). However, the gate areas themselves look very tired and probably haven't been refurbished since they were first built. Overall, I would say STN has improved a lot since it's change of ownership, but it still has some way to go. It would be great to see more regular long haul flights from here, as there is strong demand for them.

Stansted Airport has been undergoing "improvements" for some years now, but someone needs to tell them that they'll never work as the terminal is too small for the number of people travelling. We allowed bags of time for our one hour journey from Suffolk. Check in ok although there was a great big pillar in the middle of our check in area which restricted view of the desks. Security not too crowded early afternoon but very slow. I put all my stuff in the crate to be scanned and was beckoned through by staff so walked through the arch and stood in my allotted space to pick up my belongings. Except I failed to hear the guy with the crate ask me to put it through the scanner myself, so my husband had to push it along for me. This resulted in my bag being selected for a hand search "as something showed up". Gave permission and bag was swabbed inside and out, searched again and then re-scanned. Barely glanced at my tiny cosmetics in the regulation plastic bag though. All clear and got through to the next section - the winding walk through the duty free shops. No way round it as far as I'm aware - full of over made up women trying to flog you perfume. And what exactly is the point? Most people flying from Stansted are going to an EU destination so are not eligible for duty free anyway. Once through all this scrum you arrive in the central seating area which resembles a third rate hospital waiting area. No seats and we were lucky to grab a seat in the upstairs bar at Wetherspoons. Overheated, grubby and overpriced. Had to laugh at a wall socket with a chair in front of it holding a selection of customers' mobiles being charged up. Eventually got our gate number - not the transit this time but a 10 minute walk. On return the queues at UK Border were horrendous. Staff were shouting at us about using the E-passport lane which we did but still took over 30 mins and this was way past midnight. Then you get the usual people who fail to understand and are in the wrong lane. The signage in the baggage hall could be improved by putting the belt numbers up higher so they can be easily seen. Only good thing was that M&S was still open so we got milk and sandwiches. Car park bus arrived as we got outside so able to get back to car without too much wait. Bear in mind that the long term car park is around 4 miles away. Used to use meet and greet but they are now very poor. We'll probably go back to Gatwick in future even though it's twice the distance. Their improvements have worked. Stansted's have not.