Split Airport

Split is a small but efficient a bit like Croatia itself. It gets crowded at high season but it processes arrivals and departures very effectively.

Used Split Airport in early September. Arrived early from Southampton at about 1pm - bus to terminal - passport check was quick and luggage was waiting for us on the carousel!!! Check-in at Split was quick - no queues - our Flybe plane only carried about 100 passengers. Departure area has lots of seats. Cafe prices high - buy drinks etc in town before you travel to the airport! Toilets clean. Good experience at this airport.

The road to the airport is single carriageway for much of its length and the journey takes about forty minutes from the centre of Split but the taxi driver said that in high season it can take much longer.The airport itself is small but clean and modern and seemed to be efficiently run; check-in and security was fast. I flew out on a Saturday morning which seems to be a busy day for the airport because the departure lounge was very busy. There is a single set of lavatories for which a long queue had built up and one small café which was also struggling to cope with a long queue. Incidentally this is the only place where you may buy bottles of water or soft drinks as the only shops are two large duty free outlets.It was possible to find a seat and large windows overlooking the runway and apron provided a welcome distraction when waiting to board.

Arrived around 11am at Split from Manchester. Airport not too busy only about 4 other aircraft on the tarmac. Very swift passage through the building and out to the awaiting coaches. Return journey. Told by rep that airport very busy on a Saturday in high summer with up to 100 flights! Told that this is only a problem during high summer- hence why Split Airport is still relatively small. Had a stroke of luck though when our tour rep rang ahead and informed us that the outside check-ins had been opened just for us! Walked straight off the coach and to the three/four little desks that are positioned outside under canopies. Baggage checked in and x-rayed here and put straight onto a luggage cart you cannot get better than that! I admit we were lucky as inside the terminal there were large queues for checking in- but surely in high summer queues are to be expected. Security relatively swift much quicker than the 30-45 minutes of queues in Manchester which Was a nightmare. Departure lounge small and only two small cafes and a couple of duty frees which were extremely busy. Staff in airport were friendly enough toilets were kept clean and tidy certainly alot cleaner than the ones at Manchester. Had to be bused out to the plane which was only a short distance away (had walked to terminal from aircraft on arrival) but the airport was a lot busier than when we had arrived. So yes Split Airport is Busy during July August but I could not complain and felt that they did a good job for such a small airport.

A nightmare to check-in - It took over 90 mins to check-in for my flight it was taking at least 10 to 15 mins to deal with each person. The departure lounge was completely unsuitable for the amount of people; large queues for the toilets café/bar and only seating for half the people. It was also very difficult to get information about the length of delays as these weren’t post on the information board. It was a Saturday in August and probably one of their busiest times but it rates as one of my worst airport experiences.

Split Airport on a Saturday in mid-summer is obviously a different experience than reported by your previous correspondent. It is simply overstretched by the sheer volume of flights. Arriving wasn't too bad though we did have to queue for several minutes to get out of the baggage reclaim into the arrivals hall. Departing was awful. We had to queue to get into the terminal building itself and then join any check- in queue once we were inside as the only airline which seems to have a separate designated check-in desk is Easyjet. For all the others it is a free-for-all. It took us about 45 minutes to reach the head of our particular queue then we had to fight our way back through the queue behind us and across the hall to access Security and Departures. Security itself was fairly swift and efficient but upstairs in the Departures lounge itself there was more congestion with queues for everything including the loos (it took our daughter 20 minutes at least to pay a visit!). We were lucky: we managed to find two seats for the three of us to share while we waited for our flight to be called. From what we could see the airport itself could be as congenial as your other correspondent suggested but it is not really equipped for Saturday summer schedules. (There seem to be far fewer flights in the week - we stayed on an island across from the airport - so I'd advise prospective visitors to try to avoid flying into or out of Split at the weekend).

Split Airport was a nightmare to find from the city but once there I was pleasantly surprised how efficient it was. Check in was swift (well done British Airways) and the transition through customs and onto the aircraft seemed a breeze. Great area whilst waiting for flights with a well stocked duty free shop. A pier to the aircraft would have been nice but overall a good experience.