Leeds Bradford Airport

Flew in from Palma yesterday and the contrast between the two airports couldn't have been different. Leeds £1 charge for the trolley £2 charge for driving through the car park local traffic wardens waiting to pounce on anyone having the audacity to stop on the service roads huge queue at passport control. Welcome to Britain! In short Leeds Bradford is a grubby little money-making operation.

I use this airport between 6 and 12 times per year. It amazes me how quickly they can make it worse but they seem to manage it every time I use it. The £2 fee for passengers being dropped off started the day I returned last week. The extra long queues at passport control the longest yet. Around 25 minutes.

A small over utilised airport with poor customer service and amenities - in the 6 months I've been unlucky enough to use it it's getting worse. As pointed out - it's a long walk from any short stay through check in and security. This has recently been made worse. In the event someone wants to drop you off at the airport - they will now pay £2 for the pleasure (unless you use a distant car park). There's little space in the check in areas (except the separate Jet 2 portacabin) leading to mixed queues of passengers arriving at the airport some waiting to check in and some waiting to go through security. There is one person handling security for 'standard' passengers - which is the majority of them. when I leave in the morning - it takes approximately 15 minutes to clear the passport check and another 10 to get through security. Jet 2 and others have scheduled flights which converge between 0730 and 1100 leading to a couple of thousand people (no exaggeration) attempting to get past one person. Of course if you're willing to stump up another £3 you can 'fast track' - with another dedicated member of staff waiting to check your boarding pass. Airside facilities are dire and over utilised. No choice but to wander through shop to move from security to the gates - carefully laid out to ensure it's impossible for more than a couple of people to pass through without bumping into each other. Awaiting you is insufficient seating and the usual dreadful airport chain cafes. Staff are surly on the whole and gate announcements are tardy and inaccurate. Looking to board at gate 9 for Southampton. That's fine - as long as you wait for an entire group heading for Belfast to board first. No co-ordination between ground crew and general lack of engagement. To summarise - unpleasant experience.

I used this airport again last week for the first time in a couple of years and found it better than recent reviews suggested. The weather was awful and the car park was in a treacherous state but inside the terminal information about delays was good (announcements actually apologised for the 'inconvenience that will be caused' rather than the more usual mealy-mouthed 'may be caused') staff were available polite and cheerful and my BMI flight to BRU got away less than an hour late despite the need for de-icing.

In the past LBA had all the virtues of a small airport for which the odd limitation was an acceptable trade-off. Now it's just another miserable big airport in miniature - all of the bad bits with none of the good bits. As other posters have noted the drop-off experience is ghastly and the £1 baggage trolley charge is crass. The former long stay car parking has suddenly been chopped in two. They made the half that's nearest the terminal into short stay. This bit is naturally deserted since LBA has almost zero business/short haul traffic. So you now walk miles across this empty car park before reaching the long stay somewhere near Horsforth. From here your long walk uphill back to the terminal is compounded by all the old entry doors being permanently locked since they now placed the main entrance at the far end of the terminal. Once inside of course they make you double back since security is back in the direction you came from. A good work out for such a tiny airport. Baggage handling can be lame. On my inbound flight when the bags emerged on the carousel they were from the wrong flight. Pax noted this staff did nothing. So staff were alerted who immediately went on the defensive and refused to help "we don't know any more than you do" etc. So we all stood and watched the same bags go round for maybe 20 minutes with no-one taking anything off. Because no bags were claimed there was no room to load any more of the right bags. So they just kept going round and round. Staff refused to take them off bizarrely insisting "please remove your bag so we can make more space". Hey they're the wrong bags we kept telling them. "Don't get shirty with me it's not our fault" etc. Meantime the other side of the curtain 4 baggage handlers sat around doing nothing with full carts that they could not load - stalemate. Eventually enterprising pax started pulling off the wrong bags manually to make the odd bit of space. At which point ground staff suddenly decide to confuse everyone by announcing "if your bag has not arrived please come and fill in a form". So now more mayhem as the pax try to ascertain "did they not even load the bags at all?" Reply - "we don't know any more than you etc" Meantime the odd correct bag suddenly starts appearing one at a time in the gaps created by the enterprising pax. An hour later eventually everyone got their bag one by one. By the way this was the only inbound flight in an otherwise deserted baggage hall. It really defies belief. Well done guys you messed up the nice little airport that was LBA.

Leeds Bradford has a dreadful and distant approach for passengers - the barriers and drop-off arrangements are some of the worst in the world. It seems to have been assumed this is a centre of terrorist attack and the precautions are ludicrous ! IDH airport of the capital of the western world actually allows drop-offs at the doors ! The Jet2 terminal looks like a temporary building and the security queues are a joke !

Excellent check in - literally two minutes. Food hall ok although limited choice. Security was quick and departure hall was clean and not overly busy - although it can be very busy Friday/Saturday. Arrival was quick - there was a queue at immigration but all desks were open and we queued for no more than five minutes. The baggage reclaim area was a breeze and no queue for baggage. I used the short stay car park - whilst its fairly expensive it is in front of the terminal and very convenient.

I found Check-in and security a breeze. Departure lounge fairly busy but plenty of seating - downside was food smell downstairs from the food outlet. On arrival back immigration fairly busy but queued no more than 5 minutes. Arrivals hall very busy - 5 flights sharing 4 carousels. However bags off and collected in 10 minutes and out out of the onsite car park 5 minutes after that.

Having moved to Germany and had to frequent LBA much more I am appalled at the security provisions ie length of wait and their attitude. I was going to ignore my last flight to Dusseldorf on 26th March with Jet 2 but it still remains with me. One screen in use 3-4 personnel hanging around passengers shouted at for their mobile ringing. Where does it say they have to be turned off? I tried to tell myself they were being so secure in their searches but the mobile phone I had lost was in my bag they missed that even though I asked them to look for it. Overseas visitors were trying to jump the queue as they were frightened of missing their flight everybody was hot bothered and stressed and surrounded by noisy youths who were not told to switch off. My flight was delayed due to security not that Jet 2 seemed bothered and the shop was empty because like me I had no time to do the shopping I wanted to do. I also had a bet with my husband which I lost over being challenged about my plastic bag for toiletries that was the first time they did not challenge what had always been acceptable in Stuttgart Amsterdam and Dusseldorf?

Pre booking car parking - if you are taking two cars you need to use two separate visa/credit/debit cards unless you will be charged again and then £10.00 refund fee for your trouble is applicable. This is after receiving E mails to confirm both bookings and instructions. Its the first time I have prebooked this service but will use alternative in future. Had to wait 6 hours for call to be returned and 7 days for a refund!