London Stansted Airport

Over the last three weeks I have flown from and to Stansted on three separate occasions for both personal and business purposes, returning on a Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings so fairly representative of the week in my opinion. The long and the short of this review is to say how appaling and shameful the whole passport control "process" is. Wait times have been a leisurely 35 minutes and a really depressing 55 minutes. I known it's not Stansted's direct responsibility but that of the UK Border Agency however they run the place and need to exert pressure on the UK Border Agency to do something about the shambles that it is. Either they don't have enough staff or they completely misjudge the number of passengers due to arrive - hard to believe given the amount of pre-flight information that everyone is required to supply. Equally, when the automatic passport gates can't operate effectively "because the sun is in the wrong place (yes - that's what I've been told) and there's too much glare it's a very, very poor joke which no-one finds funny. Note to Stansted management - It's all well and good spending lots of money on improving the "pre-flight shopping experience" areas but remember this - the allure of shopping is easily negated by the Passport Control debacle.

Our departure was perfect. Ryanair were brilliant, efficient and courteous. Security was no problem, very quick. 15 minutes in total. Unfortunately coming back was rather different. Hundreds of people waiting for passport control. Out of 20 booths 8 were unmanned. The E passport system was not working properly.There was an a announcement that the queues were due to the volume of people. Didn't they know this? They must know in advance how many passengers are arriving. Why weren't the booths manned? What on earth do people coming to this country for the first time think? Waited an hour, all buses full. Then crammed on like a sardine, falling over suitcases in an oven.

I have never seen such chaos going through passports control, my late evening Ryanair flight was a little delayed, but there were thousands of people in the immigration hall. It was so badly organised you could not make out which was the queue for the e-gates or manual ones. The egates where malfunctioning all the time, some people after several attempts sent back to the manual check and join yet another long queue. It took me 1.5 hours to go through! Not impressed and next time will fly out from Southend or Luton.

Strange organization of an airport. In order to get to most gates you have to take the train. That brings you to a building with gates only. Only other facility in this building is the toilet. If your flights delayed, you can't get back to the main terminal with shops etc because the train's only one way and would bring you back to passport control. So once you arrived at the gate, you are simply stuck. Because of that the airport obviously can't be bothered to update the flight information on the screens. So your flight will according to the screens always be on time and disappear after the original time. Thus you can't go away from the gate anymore since you'll miss the boarding otherwise.

Over-priced fancy shops that you are forced to hang around, no seating for customers forced to endure the last minute rush to gates, Meet and Greet parking is a joke. Huge delays at passport control and many newer passports not working at the eGates (apparently my photo was too shiny!). Complete absence of customer focus.

I have been very critical of Stansted in the recent past, but on my latest experience - inbound 2 July and outbound 4 July - I have to say that security was working more efficiently as regards the number of E-gates in operation, and that the dreaded shopping mall corridor, transit corridor into the food area and the food area itself was much more acceptable because the overhead panels had been removed allowing plenty of daylight and reducing the feeling of claustrophobia and the 'hamster in a tunnel' feeling. The exit to the Ryanair 'wing' has been moved and the passageway along the windows has been narrowed and access to the toilets removed. This makes for considerable congestion - including a few brave souls returning to the terminal against the flow, and the narrowing seems to be also in force in the 'underground' corridor between the departures lounge and the steps/escalator to the Ryanair 'wing', which made some of the older people around me panic that they might miss their flight. The airport was extremely busy and the only new, but major, criticism I have was the queue at the Ryanair desk at the start of the Ryanair 'wing' which stretched back into the corridor and the escalator/steps area due to handling passengers whose flight had been cancelled. This made it very congested for passengers arriving at the 'wing' for their gates. It might be helpful if the queue for passengers needing attention from the desk be separated by ropes so that the flow of passengers into the terminal could be better controlled as there is a potential danger of 'overcrowding' in such a small, enclosed area.

What a horrible experience. Long queues at Security, even at the fast track. Overcrowded in the terminal, too much focus on shopping and not enough on traveller comfort. Such a stressful environment. Coming back late at night there was not enough ground crew on and we had to sit on the plane waiting for staff to come to guide us onto the gate and then wait again for steps to be delivered to the plane. Just glad that it was an internal UK flight as I dread to think what border control would be like. Will actively try to avoid in future.

Stansted Airport is an awful experience. In particular, arrivals was carnage. After arriving at midnight on a Ryannair flight which was late, we were met by masses of other people all trying to get through passport control. Not all the e-machines were working and not all the desks were open. We waited ages for our luggage and my padlock was missing from my suitcase; thankfully everything was okay. Dirty toilets. Many of the restaurants were closed. People cramming onto one bus to get to the car park. It took 2.5 hours from the time we joined this 'queue' to reaching our car. Stansted does not appear to have either the infrastructure or manpower to cope. I will think twice before booking another flight at this airport.

It took almost two hours to get through security. You are then forced to walk through a maze of the usual stores to a small area with very little seating - you have to wait in this holding area before being given your gate 30 minutes before departure. It is then a 10 minute run to your gate. In the few minutes I hung around Ryanair service desk, eight passengers had missed various flights due to being late reaching the gate.

After a tiring journey from Italy we were faced with the queues for passport control! There were 19 rows packed with travellers which moved very slowly. When we finally reached the booth the machine checking our passport failed several times. We are both in our mid seventies and will not be returning to Stansted Airport! Not a pleasant experience. Unable to comment on airport facilities as we didn't have time to use them either on the outward or returning journey.