Luton Airport

I have never bothered to reveiw an airport before but Luton Airport is catastrophic. Horrendous traffic, requires an extra hour to get there, building work intrudes on every part, making it horrendously claustrophobic and all they are adding is shops. The work on the forecourt for departures means lugging heavy luggage over a nightmare of uneven concrete and inadequate signage creates panic in everyone trying to check bags. Taxis charge a fortune to drop passengers miles away from the terminal. Service at Easyjet bag drop appallingly slow, huge queues and no help from anyone. They say it will all be ok in 2-3 years, well by then they may well have lost their customers, they deserve to. Cheap travel is hell and Luton airport was a particularly evil sort of hell to travel through. Never again.

It seems that, although every review for Luton airport is dismal, nothing ever seems to improve. I have used this airport regularly (most weeks) on business travel for over 10 years now and it's only advantage is that it is close to my home. The huge delays however, now make it about the same time to get checked in as Heathrow, over 40 miles further. The traffic is appalling, security is slow, the whole place is unbelievably crowded, passport control is woeful. Doubling passenger numbers over the last 5 years only works if you upgrade the infrastructure accordingly, but they have not. Came in last week at 6-15 on a Thursday evening, 2 hours 20 minutes from landing to getting to my car in Short Stay. We landed, taxied to the gate and sat there, the pilot came on to apologise that the handling agent had let them down "again" and no steps were available. 15 minutes later, we get steps but no staff member to escort us the 75 feet to the terminal, that took another 10 minutes. Well over an hour to get through passport control then fight your way out of the scrum that is the arrivals hall (why put the train / bus ticket desks by the exit door?), then another battle, the "short walk" across a live building site to the car park. For your sanity, go somewhere else.

We used this airport last week with family and 2 young children and it was a nightmare, we were herded about like cattle. It seems to me that because of the extension work the public areas have been reduced but they are still bringing through the usual amount of customers without the capacity to manage them, it felt like a third world airport. From queing up the road to get to the drop off zone which is chaos, to the queing inside, rude staff who are obviously getting the brunt of people's anger, Palma airport was far superior and a much better customer experience, Shame on Luton airport, sort it out.

After having to pay the rip off charge of £3.00 for the convenience of being dropped off by taxi at the drop off point and refusing to pay more for the convenience of a luggage trolley, you then have to drag your cases along a convoluted, uncovered walkway crossing between traffic, for around 200 to 300 meters before you even get into the terminal. God help you if it's raining. On return, if you want the luxury of a taxi home, you face the prospect of dragging your cases through queues of people waiting for buses to the sole taxi company allowed to use this airport, grandly advertised as 'chauffeur driven cars at taxi prices.' More like chauffeur driven prices for ordinary taxi's if you ask me. I would expect to pay that sort of price if my journey was at midnight, not mid afternoon. So, it was back to the bus for the hour long journey from Luton to Houghton Regis, with a roundabout trip through Dunstable, before we could drag the cases to our door from the bus stop. Obviously, as there is no competition between taxi's operating from Luton now, they are able to charge more or less what they like, which once again amounts to a rip off. Why our other taxi company's no longer allowed to pick up from Luton anymore? And, where is all that money going to from the drop off point charges.

"Lowcost" it screemed at Luton Airport at all corners upon my arrival. The traveler at Luton is welcomed with an ugly container like building structure, narrow and dirty, smelling sanitary installations, unfriendly staff – fly low cost and you get what you pay for. OK, next time, I know. The Luton experience I had during my next day’s departure, even topped the arrival. The saying “the early bird” did not really pay off for me at 5.30 in the morning, after queuing for the ignominious security check, I had an encounter with an apparently frustrated security check staff, who insisted that I had to change my already small liquids bag to an even smaller one. I travelled with my "too big" liquids bag through Amsterdam, Lisbon, Frankfurt, even Gatwick and Heathrow the weeks before without any problems, just the security at Luton seem to have a problem with it, creating delay and frustration. It did not happen only to me, I saw at least 4 other passengers in my queue, who also had liquid bags that were "too big" and were forced to get a new one – no matter what – and all this was due to the “EU regulations”, as we were told. All this would not be so frustrating, if I hadn’t been compelled to go back outside to the check-in terminal, withdraw 10 GBP, then get change for a 1-pound coin, with which I needed to buy a smaller liquids bag and then queue in again for another 20 mins or so for the second security check - now with my liquids in the correctly, “Luton-sized” (and paid for) bag. By the way, I was still carrying the “too big” plastic empty and folded in my Jacket just to see what happens – which, of course, no one seemed to care about. My personal resume of this first ever trip to Luton? I will avoid this airport at least for the next decade or so – if I need to go back to the area, I will fly in via LGW or LHR, from there take a taxi or uber ride to the region, which will be faster, cleaner, friendlier and least frustrating.

The worst airport in the UK, and after what seems so long in development the conditions just seem to get worse. Avoid at all cost, there are better options. You pay premium prices to park in a field and the facilities are so poor, bring back Luton airport 10 years ago it was much better.

✅ Verified Review | If I could post a review of Luton Airport which consisted purely of incoherent screaming, I would. Let's start with the car parking. Paid for the mid-term parking, which consisted of uneven muddy gravel just short of the taxi-ways. I'm not sure how they managed to get muddy gravel in the midst of a heatwave, but let's assume that's part of Luton's magic. There's no marked spaces in that area, and cars parked any old how (in what seem to be roads, next to fences with "no parking within 3 metres" signs, etc). It's 500m to the terminal, but there's no pavement to walk there, so you're going to be waiting for the shuttle bus, which is going to be stuck in the traffic. I forgot to mention the traffic to start with, so let's back track to that. Do you ever feel like your car is overtaxed by going above walking speed? Then the approach to Luton Airport and its parking is for you. You can give your car a nice lesiurely roll along the road, while admiring the departing airplanes, and trying to guess if you'll make it into the parking and the terminal in time to make it onto the one you have a ticket for. Stressful fun for all the family. Now we're into the terminal. I'm not sure how much of this is Luton's fault, and how much is Vueling's (the airline we flew with), but there's plenty of joy to spread around. By this point we'd burnt most of the extra time we'd given ourselves for getting to the airport, so it was wonderful to find out that our check in line was the one snaking halfway along the check in hall and out of the doors. The one with one desk open to check in people for two flights leaving within an hour. Queue through this with continuing stress, and see that our flight has been delayed, meaning that we've got a bit of time back to at least get a drink after passport control. Head through passport control, check the boards, the gate number's up with "go to gate" and still delayed. Stop into WHSmiths to get water for the flight, and in the space of time I'm in there my other half sees the time brought forward, and the status go from "go to gate" to "now boarding" to "last call", prompting a run into the deep labyrinth reaches of Luton Airport to a queue at the gate. A queue that's suspiciously not moving. A queue that's not actually started boarding, at a gate that's miles from the shop section. Eventually the queue makes its way across the tarmac and onto the Vueling airplane. Headlines from that week - "UK set for hottest September day since records began". That was two days before, but still decidedly summery on the day we flew. The reason that's relevant is we boarded the plane, took our seats and waited to depart. Everyone's sitting waiting, fiddling with the air outlets, and starting to fan themselves as the temperature inside the plane starts to rise. After about fifteen minutes it's getting a bit unpleasant, and we get the announcement that the ground based air conditioning system is broken, and that the air conditioning team at Luton is also "erm... broken." This goes on for an hour (giving lie to the notion that the plane wasn't delayed by 45 minutes). I'm not sure how hot it actually got, but apparently chocolate melts above 30 degrees C. Our return after the weekend involved a long queue for border control, another intermittent shuttle bus (don't believe the 'every ten minutes' claim), and more traffic out of the airport. To be honest, I was just happy to be out of there. Never again Luton

Luton airport is one of the worst airport experience I had after Berlin Schonefeld. It's a large container basically, extremely badly organized, the signage is poor, orientation is a nightmare. The queue for the passport check was one hour long. One hour. All this at midnight, not exactly at peak hour. The cab we had booked had left by then. There were no trains and only 2 busses to London. Humongous queues had formed in front of them. We had to catch a very expensive taxi. This happened after our flight was 2 hours late.

The worst airport I have ever been to, long queuing for everything, too warm, every other person was on a stag do, and the shuttle bus from the train station was slow, absolutely packed full and added to the somewhat unenjoyably experience. The only positive I can say they had was that they were consistent throughout, as everything was dismal.

I flew from Belfast to Luton on Fri 16th Sept. It took 1hr 20mins to get the luggage from the aeroplane to baggage collection. That was longer than the flight. No communication from staff apart from the one who came to tell us it would be 5 minutes. Apparently only half of the staff turned up for work not my problem. I missed my pre-booked bus and had to buy another ticket. Trying to contact anybody is practically impossible.