Bournemouth Airport

Bournemouth Airport is one of the most user-unfriendly airports I have used a place where passengers appear to be treated as a real inconvenience. Firstly the idea of not having a pavement and trying to restrict pedestrian access to and from the airport is ridiculous. It is then absurd to erect notices saying Pedestrian Access not permitted "For your safety"! When they have purposely made it unsafe for pedestrians by erecting barriers and not providing a pavement. The abandonment of the free 10 min drop off/pick and the impositon of the £2.50 charge with the accompanying barriered access road and permanent manning of a barrier is prison-like and I would have thought hardly financially beneficial considering the extra manning it must involve. At outbound security passengers are treated like idiots there is no table for passengers to sort their belongings into trays prior to the loaders as at other airports. Being a frequent traveller as many are we know the rules and are quite capable of loading out own trays at a table without the indignity of having to open bags and remove items on the floor in the waiting queue. Finally the new arrivals hall must have been laid out by either a prison warder or a gymnast. It is ironic to see 3 security officers patiently waiting whilst a new arrival of passengers negotiate the long distance chicane hardly wide enough to negiotiate with a trolley/case. Surely the girl at the head of the queue would be better employed opening the barriers so that the first arrivals can go straight to the desks and then opening other parts of a smaller chicane as nessesary. Certainly at other airports (eg Gatwick where passenger numbers are significantly greater) they see no need for a girl to show passengers to an appropriate desk or to have such lengthy chicanes a sign saying "Wait here until called forward" suffices. Perhaps your management should visit other airports a benefit from others experience.

Avoid this airport's rip off parking - £2.50 drop off / pick up! It feels like it's run by a wheel clamping firm with cones and cameras everywhere. You cannot even walk in as they have made the verges unsafe and there is no proper footpath (what happens in an emergency?). Whoever runs this airport has forgotten the importance of first impressions and they will not notice whatever improvements might be underway if they walk in feeling ripped off on arrival.

What a liberty - the £2.50 drop off and pick up charge. I use this airport 2-3 times a year not any more I would rather have the extra expense and go to Southampton its a nicer airport as well.

Staggered at the charges at Bournemouth Airport. £2.50 to drop my family off and another £2.50 to pick them up two weeks later. The cheek of it is they have now closed the footpath to the airport and festooned the area up to and including the junction by the main traffic lights with enough cones to make it look like a military action.

New terminal is very nice but the arrivals building is still the old hospital waiting room. Be warned that parking is an absolute joke. £2.50 for half an hour is criminal. On approach to the airport you are notified of the charges but they have put cones down to avoid people turning around. If you want to leave the airport you have to go into the car park thus paying £2.50. I will not be flying through Bournemouth as the parking charges are stupid. Not worth it.

A very poor rating since they started ripping off passengers by charging for a drop off. The theft of 2.50GBP just to drop a passenger at the airport is a rip off. They have even employed 'Jobsworths' to operate a barrier so that they can steal from the driver dropping off a passenger.

Publicity does not make it clear that the "New Terminal" just opened does not include any alteration to the dismal arrival buildings which will not be improved until an unspecified date next year. The time taken for baggage to travel a couple of hundred metres from aircraft to baggage hall with only a single flight being handled is very poor. Security appears to have variable comments from passengers. My experience was that the staff were helpful but there were not enough with the queue extending into the check-in area not helped by the passenger "flow" from the busiest check-in having to negotiate past all other check-in desks to reach the security area.

Being disabled I was pleased with the excellent wheelchair assistance provided the G4S staff - particularly in comparison with that of the indifferent staff this time last year! The new departure facilities are a great improvement on the old but the catering service lets itself down with only the one pay point and a large queue in consequence! Also there's not enough staff on to serve and clear the tables. Yet another case of keeping down the staff costs at the expense of customer inconvenience? Security is improved on our last experience where we had to queue for 40 minutes for the passport check. This time the staff numbers on duty bore the right relationship to the volume of passengers to be checked.

Complaints about the car parking costs are valid the cost of taxi services to from the airport has been given to the largest local taxi company in the area so others are excluded. The taxis however (Approved local councils authority metered taxi rates) will be a comparable rates you would pay throughout the UK. As far as the infrastructure surrounding Bournemouth airport I wrote to my local MP in Bournemouth about two years ago asking what the plans were to improve the infrastructure to get to from the airport by car. I'm still waitng for a reply although I did get a photo copy of a letter produced by someone at BIA saying they were going to supply a shuttle bus service. Not really the answer I was looking for. The whole Bournemouth airport experience has always been one of make do and don't mend and I don't think anything will ever change..

New terminal is under construction so you can expect a little walking through a building site at times but they are managing very well. A major gripe - the officious G4S Security Supervisor who checks the size of passengers re-sealable liquid bags before you get into security. He told my Wife that the bag she had her make-up in was too large and directed her to a machine that sold plastic bags for an incredible £1. The bag that she was using was given to her by Security Staff at Gatwick only three weeks before but was not acceptable at Bournemouth. He produced a hand written felt tip pen sign with some dimensions on and said that it was his decision as too what size was accepted. We can only assume that the machine was owned by this man.