Malaga Airport

❎ Unverified | I travel a lot with work and for pleasure and I have to say this is the first and last time I'll travel here. The airport is horrendous. If you are a family with a small child you have to queue with everyone else and they only have one scanner that will allow oversized objects to be scanned (push chairs). The staff were rude and quite frankly more likely to talk to each other than help customers. The queues for security are a free for all with people pushing in jumping the lines, especially if you are with children or with special assistance people. It took ages! We also sat on the plane next to a family with a disabled teenage son, who the ground crew at the last minute decided that a they may need to stop sitting in the reserved disabled seats and discussing the boxing match that night and help getting the on teenager on the plane. Eventually the father had to carry the teenager onboard himself.

✅ Verified Review | My wife and I have used Malaga Airport four or five times every year starting in 2008, always with hold baggage to check in. Generally I have found it very good indeed. In winter, I have dropped off my hire car just 80 minutes before scheduled departure time: in summer, I allow another hour. Occasionally we have been pulled from the Easyjet drop off queue to catch their Gatwick flight, and perhaps Easyjet could man more desks at peak times. However, you get what you pay for and I have nothing but praise for them. On only one occasion have we had to politely request to queue jump at passport departure control. Sometimes the automatic inbound passport readers have not worked, but this has not been a problem. I have been flying since 1960, and this airport is certainly no worse than others. There are areas where it could improve, mainly extra manning at check-ins, security and passport control, but as an airport mainly catering for holidaymakers it has to cope with huge variations in passenger numbers over the course of a year. They need highly-trained staff and hiring seasonal temps could risk our security.

✅ Verified Review | Very busy and quite efficient airport. Check in is reasonably smooth but requires time as there are many passengers dropped of by buses, ie lots of people to be processed at the same time. There are long lines for the security check however. Check in area is reasonably clean. In departure terminal: too many travelers compared to the services offered. No decent book shop.

❎ Unverified | Organised chaos, nobody about to help, we had a son with autism who we had applied assistance for, nobody was interested in helping. Appalling service, nowhere to sit in departure. It was filthy in departures, nobody told you what to do at security, I had a child who couldn't cope.

❎ Unverified | The easyJet check in process was far from easy. There were several hundred people trying to check in with only 3 people on the check-in desks. This resulted in a huge delay - 1 hour 15 mins to check in suitcases and despite arriving at the airport 2hours 10 mins before the flight departure time, we ended up rushing through security and straight to the gate then straight on the flight. This was a terrible end to our holiday - and all easyJets fault. My 2 young children sat patiently waiting for the 75mins check in time and had nothing to eat for several hours because there were not enough staff on.

❎ Unverified | Passport control was an absolute shambles. 40 minutes wait with young family. Thought I was going to miss the flight. Had to kindly ask to skip queue. Flight delayed 1 hour only due to very very slow working passport control staff who only wanted to give my husband evil looks as if to provoke him. Never ever again!

❎ Unverified | On arrival there were massive queues and when we finally got to the front we saw that there were two lines, one where you had to use a machine and one where you didn't. After using the machine you still had to go past the official and the other queue had to go past one. So there are only two officials on duty and randomly half of the people had to use the machine. This caused almost one hour delay.

❎ Unverified | When travelling back to Cardiff from Malaga, the information board showed a 15 min delay then went to 45 min delay then immediately went to last call. We were to proceed to gate B but when we got there the queue was 80 yards long. Several different flights to various destinations, all in the same queue. We had to go under the marker tapes to the front, others shouting that we were pushing in, but if we had joined at the back we would have missed our flight. Complete chaos, no staff wanted or were able to help. People panicking that they would lose their flight. It was a real nightmare.

❎ Unverified | I have always found Malaga Airport relatively congenial in the past. Exactly a year ago we had no problems either on arrival or departure. This year, however, my experience was completely different. Perhaps this was because our arrival and departure were in the middle of the day rather than mid-morning as in the past, but it was one long catalogue of delays and queues. We practically had to fight our way out of the airport on arrival because the whole of the arrivals area and even the exit doors were congested with passengers and drivers trying to find each other. Is there really only one main exit to such a large and relatively modern airport? Departure was even worse, apart from security which, though very busy, seemed to be working fairly efficiently. Our flight gate was announced almost 90 minutes before departure time, but when we saw the queue for passport control we understood why. There were only two officers checking passports at the entrance to Area C: we queued for 20 minutes to get through and by the time our passports were checked the queue had at least doubled in length since we had joined it and was snaking back out of sight into the main restaurant / shopping area. Our gate was changed twice after the gate staff had arrived and they were the ones who had to announce the move on each occasion. (Our flight had mysteriously disappeared from the screens during this time.) Consequently when boarding finally did begin, after departure time had actually passed, there was a loud cheer from the melee which had originally been an orderly queue. Then there was another long wait beyond the gate as we looked at our plane where nothing seemed to be happening. After about 20 minutes or so, we witnessed 2 ground staff physically and very gingerly carrying a wheelchair passenger down the front steps of the plane. Presumably the airport's normal arrangements for assisting such a passenger had failed to materialise. Only after that was it possible for us to board our delayed flight. The captain apologised for the delay saying somewhat laconically that the organisers of Malaga Airport had been taken somewhat by surprise by the arrival of the busy season. If this is typical of the airport in mid-June, I dread to think what it must be like in July or August.

✅ Verified Review | Arrived into Malaga along with other arrivals, which obviously the airport was aware of. Waited 1h 30mins to get through security and I was at the front of the line. Children screaming for the toilet along with adults. 25 degree heat. Absolutely diabolical and I have seen some poor airports round the world. They only had 2 staff on. Spare staff and e-passport control not active. Spain should be ashamed of themselves knowing the distress they are putting young children through. Won't travel here again in a hurry.