"baggage reclaim is a bad joke"
E Jones (Germany)
✅ Trip Verified | I (have to) use this airport regularly and find it highly nerve-wrecking. At departures, queues at security are unpredictable, and the wait can be 2 hours. No fast lane. The recently reintroduced wait time indicator on the website is unreliable and changes quickly. At arrival, buses and jet bridges often leave flights waiting before they can finally disembark. Worst of all, the baggage reclaim is a bad joke, with hour-long waiting times. Today, even people on the small Embraer from Warsaw had a one hour wait. At 1945, the airport showed a screen saying "baggage expected at 1930", which stayed on until 2005 when the belt finally moved.
Experience At Airport | Arrival and Departure |
Date Visit | May 2023 |
Type Of Traveller | Business |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Seating | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | 12345 |
Airport Shopping | 12345 |
Wifi Connectivity | 12345 |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | no |
"the worst experience ever"
C Marsen (Germany)
✅ Trip Verified | I usually go to the airport early and give enough time as sometimes there are a lot of passengers. But this was the 1st time that i queued on the line for 2 hours. There were a lot of machines for baggage scanning but only a few were functioning. It was really chaotic as some passengers were also trying to catch their flight so they try to skip the line. Mind you we dont have a check in baggage as soon as we arrived in the airport we started queueing to go to our boarding gate. Long story short, we missed our flight and it's not the airline's fault. We stayed in the airport and tried to think what we could do as not to ruin the whole trip because we already booked everything. So what we did we booked again a 1 way flight that cost us 650eu and we had to book a hostel for a night for a 9hr layover. This is the worst experience ever that i had with Hamburg Airport!
Experience At Airport | Departure Only |
Date Visit | May 2023 |
Type Of Traveller | Family Leisure |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Seating | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | 12345 |
Airport Shopping | 12345 |
Wifi Connectivity | 12345 |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | no |
"the staff are arrogant and unhelpful"
T Brunner (Switzerland)
✅ Trip Verified | People not speaking German as mother tongue are treated with no respect, in a very rude way and shouted at! Even if you speak German to them they are offensive doing bad comments. With a very few exceptions the staff are arrogant and unhelpful! Unacceptable!!
Experience At Airport | Arrival and Departure |
Date Visit | May 2023 |
Type Of Traveller | Family Leisure |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Seating | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | 12345 |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | no |
"This was the worst airport experience"
Catherine Murphy (United Kingdom)
✅ Trip Verified | This was the worst airport experience I have ever had and I travel a lot. We arrived two hours before the flight, checked in our luggage - within 5 minutes and went straight to the security queue. We were told by an airport official that the line was approx 30 minutes but the queue stretched around the check in area. It was mayhem. There were no staff around, no management and no support. There were just thousands of people all converging on the security area. We queued for 1.45 hours and only caught our flight because it was delayed while they offloaded bags. 11 passengers missed our flight. Staff at security were rude, abrupt and unhelpful and most security lines appeared to be unmanned. Avoid the airport at all costs. I can’t comment on other aspects of the airport since we didn’t have time to see the shops or try the food.
Experience At Airport | Departure Only |
Date Visit | May 2023 |
Type Of Traveller | Couple Leisure |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | N/A |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | no |
"no organisation, truly chaotic"
Wendy Clarke (United Kingdom)
Not Verified | Shocking delays at security today - it took us 2hrs 50 minutes. No communication with passengers and no organisation, truly chaotic. The worst experience ever.
Experience At Airport | Departure Only |
Date Visit | May 2023 |
Type Of Traveller | Couple Leisure |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | N/A |
Wifi Connectivity | 12345 |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | no |
"Queue for security was extremely long"
S Mansell (Germany)
✅ Trip Verified | Queue for security was extremely long. Passengers missed our flight due to the chaos, flight was delayed by 30 minutes because luggage had to be unloaded. This kind of chaos around security happened nearly every time I was flying from Hamburg.
Experience At Airport | Departure Only |
Date Visit | May 2023 |
Type Of Traveller | Business |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | 12345 |
Recommended | no |
"Truly shocking customer service
Steve Shanahan (Norway)
✅ Trip Verified | If you have options - take them rather than fly out of Hamburg airport. Truly shocking customer service at every turn. I’m a business traveller and usually arrive at least 3 hours before departure to cover most modern day airports inability to give a damn about the paying customers. The automated baggage tag machines would not print my tag so I had to wait over 2 hours for the Check-in desk to open. It is supposed to open 2 hours before boarding but the desk still wasn’t open after standing in the queue for an hour. No explanation or apologies provided of course. You would have thought the infrastructure providers would have realised post COVID, levels of service had to change but oh no. To them the almighty dollar knows no equal and they don’t care one bit about the people who keep their businesses operating. Perhaps they need to remember the very recent travel bans and realise if no one is travelling, there won’t be any shareholder bonuses or dividends.
Experience At Airport | Departure Only |
Date Visit | January 2023 |
Type Of Traveller | Business |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Seating | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | 12345 |
Airport Shopping | 12345 |
Wifi Connectivity | 12345 |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | no |
"Well sign-posted"
H Shaw (United Kingdom)
✅ Trip Verified | Generally a good airport. Well sign-posted. Quite compact. Was out relatively quickly in departure and arrival. Security is thorough. Border control was friendly. The WIFI didn't work for me. The bus and S-bahn are minutes walk away.
Experience At Airport | Arrival and Departure |
Date Visit | January 2023 |
Type Of Traveller | Business |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Seating | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | 12345 |
Airport Shopping | 12345 |
Wifi Connectivity | 12345 |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | yes |
"a hot mess is an understatement"
M. Strahm (Germany)
Not Verified | To say this airport is a hot mess is an understatement. It is chaotic in every way imaginable. Around August of this year I had a trip planned to Ecuador to visit family and for it I had to take a connection in Amsterdam, a flight which started in Hamburg Airport at 6:10 AM. I knew from word of mouth that the airport was completely disorganized, so I went to the airport at 12:00 AM (00:00), six hours before my flight. The check in lines were non-existent, it was a sea of people confused and staff nowhere to be seen or clear signs showing where to go. It took us about half an hour to find the KLM counter and another hour in the check in line. Its 2:30 AM. Now that our bags are checked, I went over to the dreaded security line and on began the waiting and standing… and waiting… and standing…it had been 3 hours in that godforsaken line and it was creeping quite close to my flight’s departure and I was still not through security. As 5:50 got around I started getting desperate and asking for help from staff only to be told to wait in line and that I should have come earlier and that nobody gets priority. As 6:06 came around I was finally at security and wouldn’t you know it, I am being checked very thoroughly. I was starting to break down in tears because my friends had already gotten on the flight (we got separated at security) because I noticed it was 6:12 and they were rubbing those stupid drug towels on my carry on that had my laptop and clothes. Luckily they were done at about 6:15 and in tears I ran to the gate I was supposed to go to. There was nobody there other than the last KLM staff and she asked if I was Ms. Strahm and I said yes, that I got held up at security, and I was finally sat down in tears after the horrible panic of losing the money for a €2k trip because of the complete lack of structure and efficiency in this airport. Just completely bonkers! Around late September I went to Spain and was suffering from a burn in my left thigh that slowed my walking down and due to how fresh the wound was, had to be bandaged. I had the foresight to wear a skirt, something I dont often do at airports, because wouldn’t you know it, I was stopped at security for something showing up on my left leg. I had told the security people about my injury, shown the bandage and was stopped. They wanted to peel off the bandage that I had to pay €30 out of pocket at the doctors office because it is too painful to change by myself and once its unstuck, it rolls off. I refused because it wasn’t even a bulky bandage, about as big as my hand and a smidge thicker than a band aid, but I was not let through until I showed them the report from the hospital about my burns. Just complete hell on earth
Experience At Airport | Arrival and Departure |
Date Visit | September 2022 |
Type Of Traveller | Couple Leisure |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Seating | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | N/A |
Wifi Connectivity | 12345 |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | no |
"I found the staff to be friendly and helpful"
8 reviews Norman Mackenzie (United Kingdom)
✅ Trip Verified | My first use of this airport. Arrival was fault free, although it's a fair walk to Sbahn. For departures, I read the Skytrax reviews noting what was said about security, and was sufficiently troubled to arrive extra early and purchase fast-track. In the event, we were on the last flight of the day and there was absolutely no hassle or delay. In fact I found the staff to be friendly and helpful. My friend had left his walking stick behind on the other side of the gates, and a guard went to get it, with a smile. So full marks. Other than that, there is a severe lack of seating landside, especially for mobility impaired people, so minus points for that. Better than I expected.
Experience At Airport | Arrival and Departure |
Date Visit | December 2022 |
Type Of Traveller | Solo Leisure |
Queuing Times | 12345 |
Terminal Cleanliness | 12345 |
Terminal Seating | 12345 |
Terminal Signs | 12345 |
Food Beverages | 12345 |
Wifi Connectivity | 12345 |
Airport Staff | 12345 |
Recommended | yes |