Copenhagen Airport

While terminal 2 of Copenhagen airport does show its age this is still a charming place to go through. Speedy checking with only a few minutes in the queue. Practically no waiting time at security with friendly and helpful staff both places. Shops are a bit on the pricey side but they do have a wide selection and if you know the normal high street prices you can be lucky and get a bargain. Restaurants are excellent and can be recommended. It can be a bit of a walk from the lounges to the gates and occasionally the queue at passport control can be long but often you wait no more than 5 minutes to get through. Copenhagen Airport is an charming old airport that has managed to follow the times and is still a pleasant experience to go through.

My worst travel experience ever. At security I was taking my laptop out of my bag (you only get to unpack right at the scanner) when an aggressive attendant grabbed all my belongings out of my hands and shoved the tray through the scanner. Stunned I walked through the scanner but another guard sent be back out rudely saying I cut in front of a family (I didn't). She made me stand just outside the scanner for quite a while like a naughty school kid publicly humiliated while other passengers walked past and looked at me. When she finally said I could go through she continued to berate me saying "obviously you don't travel much!". They then kept my bag behind the counter for a further ten minutes until I finally called their supervisor. Their tone changed immediately. They explained I had left my Ipad in my bag and I said "Yes because you grabbed my things off me before I could finish!". If you like public humiliation and an alarming sense of powerlessness go to Copenhagen! For me never again.

Friday afternoon 15/6-2012 just prior to peak holiday seasons: The airport was then very crowded and then it becomes cramped to move around with family and luggage it becomes hard and tedious to move fast anywhere though never directly stuck. With only 2 hours time available prior to departure we could not manage to get time for lounge visit as time was lost in packed areas though no queues took more than 15 minutes to overcome. The airport is fantastic as one almost always get direct gate access to flights and do not have to walk far anywhere – i.e. bus transport to a/c are not frequent. Secondly after check-in one gets easily to the 1st floor and from there no more ups and downs as all the rest happens in the same level.

Arrived in Copenhagen on June 7 (last week) and had no problems. The departure yesterday was a different story and results in my agreeing with other reviewers that this is the worst airport I have been to. The SAS staff will not provide boarding tickets to passengers - - they insist that all passengers use the self-help kiosks whether you are up to the challenge or not. Some of the kiosks were "frozen" or the scanner for passports was broken and covered with tape. My email from Orbitz did not provide the correct info for me to get a boarding pass. SAS staff directed me and a lot of other folks to a line for help from one of their colleagues to look up our info in their computer at which point they wrote a number on a slip of paper and sent us back to the kiosks. After that there were the lines for baggage check-in which have already been mentioned by other reviewers as uncontrolled and very chaotic. I found the staff to be ill-tempered. The security was the next process and while I did not find any problems with my granddaughter and I passing through we watched the man ahead of us being treated very disrespectfully by the security agent. Thinking we were finally through all the hurdles there was yet another queue on the way to the gate and many passengers were asking to jump ahead for fear of missing their flights. This line was for another look at our passports. Very stressful and tiring experience with little time left for shopping.

Departed from Copenhagen on afternoon of June 9th from T3. Have to say that we were absolutely disgusted by the total chaos in approaching the security gates. No one minds waiting to get through security as it is obviously essential to safe travel but in T3 it was like a massive rugby scrum and surely the antithesis of security! It started off well enough with a pleasant security officer guiding people into a queue but the queue then approached two information girls who directed people to left or right. On each side there were 6 or so belts but no system of queuing so that everyone was just piling towards the conveyor and security gate in a random fashion pushing and shoving trying to get to the gate. It was actually very unsafe and we were left like this for about 20 minutes whilst trying to get to the security gate. Also counter productive for the airport as when we did eventually get through we were in no mood to look at the shops and just went straight to the departure gate and waited there. In addition it seemed as if the airport staff were totally disinterested in what was happening. Definitely my worse airport experience.

Flew out of Copenhagen for flight home to Australia on Singapore Airlines. Was the worst out of the airports in Europe we had used (others being Amsterdam Frankfurt and Stockholm). Check-in was fine but was abused by airport staff at baggage check for not removing my wallet from my pants. Have not previously had to remove wallet at other airports. Only a two minute wait at baggage check but then about a 15 minute wait at immigration. Only had two booths open for non Danish citizens and a lot of people in the line were getting agitated that they might miss their plane and lots of queue jumping going on with people getting angry. Best tip for airport is to go through passport / immigration control early but once on other side only one shop. Overall not a very inviting airport.

Airport a pleasure: easy to access. Easy to move around and find check-in counters. Not many queues anywhere on an Easter Sunday. Security: again no queue. Plenty of lounges (4-5) with ample space staff service minded and proactive. Precise information from monitors. Passport/immigration: again no waiting time. Gate: No waiting time to enter gate. Waiting time from gate to a/c: 5 minutes. Only announcements in gate areas – otherwise the airport is quiet and relaxing. Toilet facilities plenty and clean. No showers in any lounges (apart from the SAS-lounge). Shopping a bit intrusive as there is no way one can escape confrontation. On the other hand shopping staff were polite decent and knowledgeable.

From a facility point of view it's a very good airport but staff could benefit from some basic training in how to provide service and be polite (or at least not to be rude and arrogant). Being an international airport it should be no surprise for staff including security staff that some customers do not understand Danish and that harshly repeating the same words in Danish may not get the message through. It may also be useful for all staff especially security staff to be aware of words and phrases like "please" "thank you" "can I help you" etc.

A great airport for passengers light and open spaces but also pretty crowded. The biggest mistake of this airport is the central security that leads into the biggest tax-free shop which is the most expensive I have ever seen. Easy for transfer.

Arriving (T3) and departing (T2) at CPH and found this airport very pleasant indeed: staff at all stations were friendly and co-operative very easy to navigate to and from the metro plus there are plenty of eating and shopping facilities in both terminals. Functional & friendly for visitors to wonderful Copenhagen.