Belfast Airport

✅ Trip Verified | This morning. 11/2/19 I arrived at Aldergrove to board an 08.30 flight to Luton. I joined the Fast Track lane, which extended very close to the top of the escalator and watched as people moved swiftly through the regular queue. As it happened, 2 young men just in front of me decided to move into the regular queue and were nowhere to be seen by the time I got through! Obviously,I should have done the same! Why could another lane not have been opened for Fast Track when it was obvious that we were progressing very very slowly? Surely someone in the Security area could have taken that decision as required! My husband had dropped me off early because he’d heard that Monday mornings can be extremely busy. Security staff must be aware of this happening on a regular basis. I resent paying extra for a Fast Track service that doesn’t exist and also having to rush madly to my Departure Gate when time is short through no fault of my own.

✅ Trip Verified | The worst baggage claim in the world, why does it take an hour to get bags of a plane? Belfast International Airport. The place is tiny! Total embarrassment! To think international visitors have to endure this backward standard in 2019. This Airport hasn't progressed in 20 years! Avoid it and use the Belfast City Airport or better still Dublin Airport.

✅ Trip Verified | Another Monday evening flight - not a peak travel time - yet the hall is queued back to the security barrier. I expected that. Now here’s my complaint- only one scanner is operating plus the priority one that has almost nobody. Unacceptable. When are the overdue improvements coming? I understand when the issue is building or machine capacity. Neither of those is today’s cause.

✅ Trip Verified | Awful from start to finish. Staff are unhelpful, rude, and security staff behave like they think they’re police officers with zero customer service skills. They forget we pay their wages. Manhandling of customer property is common, escalating issues to security supervisors is just met with a blank wall of “it’s the law, customer service doesn’t come in to it”. Other than that it’s an airport that has invested in shops, but nothing that doesn’t generate a profit. Once you get past the shops, the terminal is falling to bits and smells damp, with random one armed bandits and bars sprinkled about (to generate money). On the plus side, it does, just, function as an airport, albeit the worst one I ever use. Vile airport. Horrid people. Use City airport instead as it’s much more modern and security is much slicker - the security supervisors have also had customer service training.

Not Verified | I travel through Belfast regularly and have now got to the stage where I’d rather go into Dublin or take the ferry. The queues are horrendous, the staff are rude, unfriendly and bureaucratic. I’ve actually missed a flight due to excessively long queues and when I asked to go via the fast track queue was told I would need to pay extra. Considering the golf is coming to NI in July one might assume this would have been sorted but it just gets worse. It’s too stressful and ruins a trip. It’s a disgrace and an embarrassment. Get it sorted or you’ll just lose people which is a shame when you see the changes in tourism. I’m a native of NI but live in England so see these great changes for myself but unless the airport situation is sorted, we look like idiots.

Not Verified | Arrived in from Lanzarote at 1.30am on 23 December with Easyjet. Overall the experience of the airport was horrible. Passengers bussed from the aircraft to an external arrivals door waiting in the freezing cold while around 180 passengers including elderly, parents with infants and hand luggage squeezed though the external double doors and had to climb four fights of metal stairs up to customs/border force. It was chaos on the steps passengers struggling with hand luggage, tired infants and older people. Greeted by very grumpy border force staff who were holding passengers back calling them forward individually to the border force desks which kept passengers standing in the cold stairwell. I have only ever encountered this type of processing passengers in Cuba. At least it was warm there. The corridors were grubby with old blue worn carpets. What sort of impression does this give to foreign visitors however the staff gave the impression they could not care less.

✅ Trip Verified | Consider alternatives and proceed with caution: Belfast International Airport despite being 30 minutes outside Belfast and being more UK based than International has in the past been efficient if not outstanding for travelling. The continued overcharging compared to over airports: drop off charges, charges for plastic bags, priority queues has been noted by others. However what is worse for me is the abhorrent security staff. Security continue to behave in an erractic manner going from unprofessional to overly autocratic at a whim whilst at all times maintaining disdain for passengers passing through airport security. On my last departure going through airport security I experienced the worst: bad attitudes, poor customer service and unchallenged xenophobic views. With options for better airports for departure at: Belfast City Airport (closer to actual Belfast!) and Dublin as well if travelling internationally I would advise anyone to consider if an alternative airport for departure would work better. If sadly not I suggest proceed with caution and be prepared and forewarned.

✅ Trip Verified | I passed through Belfast International on my way to board an Easyjet flight to Gatwick on 28 December. I tried to buy a sandwich in Boots and WH Smith but their shelves were bare. Later I went into Lagardere Travel Retail UK and selected a pack of crisps for purchase. At the paypoint I was asked to produce my boarding pass which I declined to do pointing out I was not legally bound to do. The checkout lady refused to serve me and removed the crisps from the counter. To avoid any hassle and having to walk back to Boots or WH Smith, I decided to show my boarding pass. HM Revenue and Customs has said there is no legal requirement to to hand your boarding pass over at the checkout. I have never had a problem at Boots or WH Smith in Gatwick Airport. Otherwise I was very satisfied with the airport facilities other than having to descent several flights of stairs to ground level and then a long walk to the aircraft.

Not Verified | I've suffered at the hands of this airport before. We have been promised improvements but they are just empty words. Horrendous queues at security. Unhelpful staff. This must be the worst airport in Europe. Action needs to be taken immediately.

Not Verified | So 2 days in the last week and a half I’ve been in Belfast Int’l to both drop off and pick up friends and relatives. On dropping off it was very early so I decided to have a coffee and breakfast in the terminal. When picking up I'd arrived early and the flight was delayed enough to force me to pass the time (coffee again). Arrivals is still something of an embarrassment. It’s not particularly grubby or run down exactly, but I does feel a bit unloved and very very dated. Where you sit waiting you can easily see the baggage carousel areas. There was an issue with the flight that arrived about the same time as my friends and there were no staff at all on hand to help answer questions for the passengers. This had the knock-on on my friend’s experience as the baggage collection gets quite congested with even just the 2 full flights of people collecting their bags at the same time. The bigger issue though was on dropping my relative off for an early morning flight. We arrived in good time as it is now fairly common knowledge that security at Belfast Int’l is a major stumbling point, both as an experience due to extremely rude staff and as a service in terms of it taking vastly too long to get through. Over the Summer Twitter was awash with photos of queues out of the security hall, down the corridor, the stairs down to the baggage hall and along the full length of the hall to the very back wall! This represented a queuing time of several hours, just to get into the security hall at all, basically the full amount of time passengers are recommended to arrive at the airport by. Luckily this was not quite the case on this day, but on leaving I was able to see the back of the queue to get into the security hall as its visible near one of the main entrances/exits. So I called and my relative told me that she was in the security hall but only just, this after I had only left her after bag drop and gone and had breakfast. So this was one of the first flights out on the day and she wasn’t going to be time rich despite us arriving a good bit before the recommended arrival/check in time. Belfast Int’l isn’t all that bad of an airport, yes it needs a little love here and there but security, security is so unimaginably bad it’s ruining the whole transit process through the facility. Management have swapped to new providers for security as announced on their social media and web site a few months ago. I’m not sure if the new company is in place yet but I hope not, because if this is the new company the only thing that has changed is the logo on the uniform of the staff member taking too long to be rude to you while you try to get airside! The standards in the food outlets and their prices, well that's another problem for another day!