Luton Airport

What a shambles of an airport. Its main purpose seems to be to extract as much money out of everyone whether they are flying or not, while not providing a a civilised service. Paying to pick up and drop off in a building site? The arrivals hall is dirty and depressing. What does this say to visitors to the UK? Come and get fleeced in a third world environment. Actually, that is doing a disservice to third world airports. A site and service that bad would be condemned and shut down in any other public service context. I will never use Luton Airport again nor recommend it to anyone.

Despite the airport's ongoing work which I am sure will be great. The traffic system is nothing short of a joke. 4 lanes going into one, who was the bright spark who came up with that? This system would work reasonably well if they dropped the money grabbing approach they have in place. How this airport has the nerve to charge £3.00 for the misery they course is beyond me. Take Heathrow - one of the world busiest airports - you drive up the ramp, drop off - and off you go. But put a barrier there and demand money and that would fail too. So in a nutshell Luton Airport drop off will never work. I was informed that they make £ks an hour at those barriers - no wonder they don't give a toss. Remember if it wasn't for us using the airport - it wouldn't exist. You don't see Sainsburys charging to use their car park do you?

Arrived at the long stay carpark, which by the way is miles away from the terminal at 6.45am for a 8.30 flight today. The busses should run every 15 mins so we went straight to the bus stop and waited for 10-15 mins and then pressed the help button. Was told the bus is stuck in traffic and that you will be better off walking. Speed walked to the terminal building got there just after 7.30am. Looked at the board and there is no dedicated check-in for each flight so went into the departures and got in one the busy lines thinking we should be ok. Got halfway down the line then asked a guy when the last call for our flight was and he said it had already closed. I said there was nothing on the tanoy to let us know and this was at 7.50. He said we don't have a tanoy here and there was nothing he could do. The whole setup is a joke, everyone blames each other and I will never book from there again.

First of all we had to queue for half an hour just to get to the car park. No traffic was moving for about 20 mins. When we did get to the car park we had to wait 20 mins for a bus. Check in was good, and the security man let us use the fast track for free, however when you get into the departure lounge there are no seats to sit down anywhere. It said Final call on the board for our flight so we ran to the gate and they had just started boarding. Why is there any need to panic people like this? However the arrivals process was much better, no queue for passport control and only a five minute wait for bags. Sort your roads out Luton airport. (there is only 1 lane of traffic that leads to a major international airport!)

Check-in queue 50 min (may be Wizzair staff though), security check today shockingly without wait, toilets disgusting. No seats available in the concourse, simply the airport is not coping with the number of people passing through, pleasant staff in Pret a Manger.

Words fail me. The only positive was the moment of check in which was a short queue compared to those either side, luckily we had all been able to practice our queuing on the roads outside. The queue on the roads approaching the airport were as others have described - shocking with no clue as to management of the chaos.

I have been to airports all over the world and this was by some distance the worst airport I have ever been to. There were queues everywhere, very uncaring staff, a lack of cleanliness and clearly a very badly managed overall environment. When we returned from our holiday the wait at passport control was 70 minutes. There were no staff to help or facilitate the problem. Outside traffic was dangerous and uncontrolled. I can't emphasise enough how shocking the whole experience was. I will never use this airport again. As an example of incompetant management they would score full marks.

Avoid Luton Airport - the traffic system currently in place is a joke. I had planned 1hr from arrival at the airport to collect a visitor from arrivals. 1hr from arrival at the airport to park and take a bus from the long-term car park to arrivals. Plenty of time you'd think. Think again - I have never been so stressed in my life. The ridiculous traffic chaos on the tiny traffic island at the airport created massive traffic queues. Passengers in cars were getting out, leaving the driver, retrieving their luggage from the boot of the car and walking about a mile to ensure they were in time for their departures. Did I make it? By the skin of my teeth and only because of delays my visitor experienced at passport control. Leaving the airport was just as bad. We waited 40 minutes for the bus that was supposedly every 15 minute to take us back to the long-term car park. Of course, that was a ridiculous long wait in the queue of traffic. Then I had to experience the queue again in my car when trying to leave the airport. Nobody on the tiny traffic island would let cars out. Why isn't there a yellow chequered box on the island to stop cars blocking it? Or why not traffic lights on the island? Anything - just get it sorted. Will I choose to use Luton again? No. Although sadly I have to go through the whole thing again next weekend when my visitor needs to catch the return flight home.

Worst airport ever. The queues are disgraceful. You have to get a bus from the train station where we were waiting at least 20 mins. Then we were met with another 25min traffic jam into the airport. The queues when we got into the airport were no better. Luckily we left enough time. This airport has clearly expanded too quickly and can't handle the demand. A bit of advise, use Stansted airport.

Massive queues, not much proper signage. Nearly missed our flight. At least until the work is completed, I would advise avoiding Luton. It's currently a horrible experience, with not enough capacity to handle the volume of travellers. Perhaps when the work is done it will be okay?