Rhodes Airport

✅ Trip Verified | Luggage collection on arrival is absolutely chaotic. Three different flight arrivals luggage was all coming through on one small luggage belt. It took an hour and a half for our luggage to arrive. Pandemonium is the only description I can give. Then you have to queue again outside arrivals to find your transfer. This is the worst airport I have experienced in over 40 years of travel. Our departure was a slightly better experience. But after going through check in and security check. there is another huge queue again for another passport check before your gate. My experience at this airport is the reason I would not return to Rhodes

Not Verified | What chaos! Went through security quickly without problems and went to duty free where we saw a large queue, assumed at first it was for a flight, no this was for passport control and it stretched the length of the airport. We waited in it for 1 hour 20 minutes, 3 members of staff checking passports in booths designed to take 8 staff. People were in danger of missing flights. It seemed like there were a number of new eating and drinking stands since the refurb, what a shame no-one had time to use them! This seriously needs sorting, it has put me off returning to Rhodes which is a shame. No information from staff or announcements.

✅ Trip Verified | Flight delayed by at least 2 hours. No information available. No air conditioning. Heavily pregnant women sat on floor as no seats. No water available. Horrible conditions.

Not Verified | The airport is under renovation/re-construction. Arrival was like entering the old Wembley stadium, crowds of people cramming into a small cramped space with no apparent tape barriers to marshal the flow. Two officials staffing six booths to glance at your passports before waving you through to bag collection - took just under 2 hours! Bags were ready and waiting on the carousel though by this time. Departures is much better. Check-in desks had tape barriers guiding you, cases went off and then off you are sent upstairs to the passport check in to eventually get outside for your flight. There are no announcements. You constantly have to check the screens. It is a very busy place but not as bad as made out to be. They are getting there gradually!

Not Verified | Absolutely shocking experience here. Currently sitting waiting for a flight which is apparently delayed. We know this because we have checked with an independent flight information service. It’s midnight now yet the departure boards haven’t been updated past 23.10 so we have had no information from the airport and there are no staff to be seen. All other flights to the UK also seem to be delayed and again no one has any information. Hoping we’re sitting in the right departure lounge because again there is no information given. I was expecting a better experience since the overhaul done to the airport since our last visit but apparently the money they have ploughed into shops and eatery’s has left inadequate facilities for boarding lounges, people sitting delayed on the floor and extortionate prices for food and drink. Seriously making me consider returning to Rhodes for a fifth time.

Not Verified | Departures was awful. It has clearly had an overhaul recently so there’s no excuse. Several thousand square feet of retail and over-priced food outlets (€65 for 4 burgers with drinks and fries) and yet only enough seating for a couple of flights worth of passengers. Chaos everywhere, people sitting on the floor so you have to step over them to get anywhere. Toilets woefully insufficient in number for the amount of passengers that are passing through at peak times. It could be forgiven if this was just a quaint old airport but with the money they have recently spent on it they really can’t have spent any more than 5 minutes on the planning for it and obviously focussed on coining it in via the tills rather than bothering to think where the passengers would go whilst they waited 2 hours for their flight!

Not Verified | At the time of travel we lived in Germany and therefore had no need to go through Passport Control. This was, we thought in the first instance lucky as three other aircraft were offloading their passengers from planes with UK registrations. When we arrived in baggage reclaim this suspicion was confirmed when the arrivals sign said the planes had come from Luton, Birmingham and Leeds. This is where the 1st problem occurred, all four aircrafts' luggage was being sent to one delivery band. Because we did not have to wait to transit passport the 150 or so fellow passengers from Saarbrucken stood next to the luggage reclaim band, however our luggage was not the first to arrive, in fact I think we were probably the last to receive our cases. Of course as we were at the front the passengers from the UK flights could not get to the band to collect their luggage. It quickly descended into chaos. To cut a long story short we waited around 90 minutes to get our cases. When we arrived at our hotel, were with TUI, we had the usual rep meeting. One of the complaints made to the German rep was the events the previous day at the airport. Her reply, in German so it may not be word perfect, was yes it is like this every week. To make sure I got the gist of the reply correct I spoke to the UK TUI reps who said yes it was terrible and even worse when you had to check-in for the return flight. They said I should pay €42 to enter the private departure lounge. Did this, yes the lounge was disgusting, rubbish everywhere, little or no food or drink and very quickly it filled up. The only good thing, about 10 minutes before the flight a man appeared and called the passengers to Saarbrucken to follow him. We did straight to the front of the departure queue.

❎ Not Verified | Reading previous reviews l was really concerned about travelling home. To my surprise travelling on Wednesday 24th July, we arrived at the airport for our flight at 18.40 to Gatwick. No queues and there were eight members of staff on TUI check-in. The airport staff were friendly and helpful in duty-free, passport control - no queues, straight through. We decided to go though to the gate as gates 1 to 4 you have another passport check. Once through there was plenty of seats, toilets, shops and a couple of restaurants. The airport has loads of shops and the staff were all very helpful. Obviously, this was our experience and if there are delayed flights as a busy airport you may encounter problems. I would recommend going straight though passport control and getting to your gate to avoid queues and missing flights in busy times. But excellent experience.

❎ Not Verified | Absolutely disgusting, would not praise this airport in any aspect. The service was appalling, nobody knew where to go and everyone was piling into a bundle rather than a line as nothing was moving. We finally managed to get into line for passport control with only 2 minutes until boarding, no help was offered and the cleaning staff were incredibly rude to the passengers. Before even getting to this stage we were greeted with the worst possible staff in the duty free, specifically at the makeup counters, the treatment we received was embarrassing. As we got to the airport with 3 hours until our flight we spent two hours in duty-free, being girls who love makeup we spent almost all of these 2 hours at the makeup counters. From the minute we walked into the shop and tested a product on our hand we were followed around from counter to counter by the staff who continually gave us dirty looks and made it very clear they were talking about us and laughing at us. On multiple occasions members of staff grabbed testers out of both our hands and told us “they are not toys”, being involved in makeup this irritated me as we were trying out products on our hands which we were considering buying. Four members of staff then continued to approach me on different occasions and try to tell us we were doing wrong and should leave the shop, only for trying out tester products on our hands, we were spoken down to and they were so rude to us, when I then asked why they had been following us about and making us feel uncomfortable the full time four members off staff started arguing with us and threatening to check cameras which I was more than happy for them to do as we had done nothing wrong. When our flight was called and we left the shop all of the staff involved went into a group and started laughing while talking and looking at us as we walked out of the store. It was incredibly childish and I have never been treated so badly in any facility, ever. This has made me sure I will not ever return to the airport. Shocking staff.

✅ Trip Verified | Nightmare experience, will not be returning ever. Sat in departure lounge watching screen with our Jet2 flight no, time went over expected departure time still no flight info. Delayed 1/2 hour came up so sat waiting for gate which then came up saying boarding so made way to gate 3. Couldn’t get through to gate 3 so asked and was told we had to join this massive queue which apparently was “passport control” with only 2 booths. We stood at the back of the queue witnessing a group of people who had had the same problem as us but with Ryanair and their flight had been delayed but then came up as boarding but got to the massive queue of people and then were told the gate had closed and they had missed their flight! On hearing this and after standing and not moving we flagged down a couple of officials and said can you help us please as our flight is boarding and we are stuck here! Unbelievably one of these women was so rude and said “yeah yeah all you people stupidly just standing staring at the boards when you should be down here at this end it’s your own fault and walked off“! At this point we realised that we would miss the flight so lifted up the queuing barrier tape and walked past everyone till we got to the front of the queue and pushed in straight to the passport booths. When we got on the plane 6 people were missing! Be warned this area of airport is totally chaotic and not customer friendly. I have been flying for 40 years and never ever have experienced anything like this. Those poor people were treated appallingly through no fault of their own! This airport makes up its own rules and the staff are appallingly rude and unhelpful.