Barcelona Airport

Appalling experience at Barcelona Airport. Reached the airport 3 hours early but only made it to final call for boarding. Took 1 hour to obtain custom stamping for VAT refund before check-in. No clear signage for the counter and only one counter open. No officer to manoeuvre the long queue as people kept forgetting to fill up the forms or getting passport and travel docs ready. There is no way to return to / access the retail or main shopping area (one level below, "gate A,B,C") after passing through passport control for gates D and E passengers. No signage or information to warn passengers. Nothing much at this boarding area, only McDonalds, a cafe, a book store and duty free shop. The staff in the duty free shop was not informative and asked us to check at the info center, and guess what? The info counter is located before the passport control.

Barcelona Airport is a disgrace. Baggage check queues always twice as long as other airports here, and once you do make it through security and passport control can take up to 2 hours. It was absolutely ridiculous to think there was no system in place to filter EU / non-EU or even remotely assist people who's flight was on last call. The chaos resulted in a 500m sprint to the gate where we just about made it, however many other passengers were left behind regardless - horrible experience.

Arrived at Barcelona El Prat from the U.S. on July 3rd around 1pm, and departed on July 9th. On arrival, the line to get through immigration had hundreds of people, but only about four staffers, it took over an hour and half to get through. Baggage claim is chaotic, our flight was not listed on the board, and there were no workers around. We found our carousel only by word of mouth. To get the train into Sante station, take a shuttle bus (free, but poorly marked) to Terminal 2, then there's a hike through an old overpass to the station.

I was in Barcelona on Business. I arrived at the airport 2.5 hours before my flight. I only had hand luggage but it was not possible to check in online (KLM fault). I waited to check in for 2 hours. The staff ran around like headless chickens and were very rude to, what I might add were paying customers. When I got to security I explained my plane was boarding and they just shrugged their shoulders. I managed to get to my flight. However, the KLM staff and pilot thought it was quite funny the stress everyone was put through and then added because of the slow boarding the plane would be leaving 1 hour late. I managed to get home but not without being put through stress the whole day. The sad reality of today is that airports and flight companies do not work together. Because of their poor cooperation the paying customer suffers. There is no respect for the customer and to be quite honest this is the only service where you can be as rude as you like and get paid for it.

We had booked special assistance via a specific spainish airline for my husband who has cerebral palsy. We have had great assistance in all other countries we have visited. Not here. Signage to find our way to special assistance non-existent. Rude airport staff at all points. Special assistance staff made husband walk to the wheelchair bay with them approx 200 meters away rather than bring the wheelchair to him. Left me to push him through passport control to the gate with no support to know where we were going. Appalling.

In my opinion Barcelona Airport T1 is a good international airport. At 5am you can drink a cup of coffee and take breakfast before your early flight. The duty free shops and other stores open at 6am so passengers that need to take early flights can still do last minute shopping. The early morning security check was fast and the only problem I have with service was the fact that we are obliged to take bus to embark the plane instead of using a airbridge, but this is a Vueling problem, not the airport.

The transfer process was so slow that we missed our flight. We queued to get through passport control for an hour. There was no announcement of last call. When we finally got through to our gate our Monarch flight to Birmingham had closed and secured doors. This meant extra night and flights to pay for. We booked to fly following day and arrived 3 hours before departure. Again checked in ok, passed through security ok. But passport control even worse. Only just made our flight departure and others were left at the gate again. No priority for soon to depart passengers, zero staff assistance, hostile passport control, no flight announcements. Absolute shambles.

Check in poor at Barcelona airport given we had speedy boarding. We also had excess luggage and nobody was there to receive it. Signs for toilets led to another terminal and after passport control into gate M we were serviced by a very small bar with only 1 tender. The queues were long and painful and the option to get a bottle of water was out as the vending machine was empty. We got a shoulder shrug from staff when asking for help. The tables were not cleaned for the duration of our wait, filthy and not what we expected from a city of this calibre.

Poor signage and lack of clear direction, the shops could not be accessed after clearing passport control. Most airports around the world require you to clear bag security, then do passport security so passengers are able to fill in time before flight shopping/browsing - but not Barcelona. Made for very boring long wait for flight with little else to eat other than Macdonalds. Poor airport layout.

What a terrible airport. When you go through passport control there is nothing apart from McDonalds and a cafe and 1 duty free whose prices are dearer than downstairs in the same terminal. We paid 51 euros to access the VIP lounge, the only food in here was some crisps, wine, soft drinks or tea and coffee. The female staff member was very rude. Barcelona airport is terrible for international flights.