Zurich Airport

Not Verified | I have not visited Switzerland for about seven years and was shocked at the shortage of staff at the airport. Long queues, total disorganisation, and very unhappy passengers.

✅ Trip Verified | The worst arrivals experience outside of New York. Just atrocious. 2 immigration desks open out or 10. Queue filled the immigration hall and spilled over. This is now a regular occurrence. Every inbound trip. Zurich airport know incoming demand but they just don't care.

Not Verified | 27 degrees outside, almost the same temperature inside, I expected at least not to sweat as staying seated. Business lounge toilets were really dirty.

Not Verified | At a peak hour - 8.20am - there were only three queues open for visitors without Swiss/EU passport. I have been queuing for 1h20 min and still nowhere near the front of the queue. There was no attempt to increase the number of immigration officers at the counter during this period. Apart from telling us to ‘stand on the left’, there was no other communication from the immigration staff on duty. I have been to Zurich airport a few times and the experience is getting increasingly worse, which is a pity. This is a lovely country and unfortunately the first experience for visitors is not a pleasant one. Please do something about this. Thank you.

Not Verified | Among airports of its size it still is the best overall. Airlines offer online check-in incl. baggage tagging, so queueing times for those companies is minimal. Priority lanes exist. Super-fast immigration clearance with automated passport and face scanning, takes two minutes, but this is for Schengen only.

✅ Trip Verified | The airport itself is clean and relatively easy to navigate. The security experience was poor. I have a largish rucksack that is fine for cabin luggage and no bigger than a 16 inch MacBook Pro. An officer questioned me saying “this is massive” (even though it is half the size of many other cabin bags). When I objected saying “it is fine”, “what do you want me to do?”, he then told me I was “being aggressive”. Needless to say I did find it confronting, unnessary, and by the end of the interaction I was annoyed. Getting a family through security is stressful at the best of times. Then the immigration queue was long, and the officer was equally officious. I had been in Switzerland for 1 day but entered France via the Eurostar a month earlier. The French immigration didn’t stamp my passport. The Swiss officer demanded proof of travel on the Eurostar. Honestly the EU needs to coordinate its border requirements from one member country to another. Overall the experience was quite unpleasant.

✅ Trip Verified |  Get ready to queue! Arrivals at Zurich from experience are fine and efficient. It's easy to find where you need to go, and there are sufficient staff. Departure is terrible! Queue to enter, queue for security, queue for the train to gate, queue for the stairs to the loooong queue for customs. Then more queues at the gate and stand in a queue post gate. We arrived at the recommended time but had no time to shop/eat as we were always in some kind of queue. It was a horrible experience. Never again. Never.

✅ Trip Verified | I cannot accept how come this airport is so bad, very little quality food with soaring prices, only 4 hours free internet, really this is a joke at 2023. The terminals are often packed but are clean though, but keep away from the smoking area of you will smell the stench. Seats are outdated and worn. There is lack of staff and they suffer a lot due to the large number of missed connections. If I can I avoid Zurich for sure.

Not Verified | Terrible airport design. It’s sprawling and takes a long time to get anywhere (and I’m used to Heathrow, Gatwick, Singapore, JFK, - loads of big and busy airports). The signposting is terrible and unclear - if I could give zero stars below I would. Took ages to find check-in. The airport map (see picture) when first arrive is more like abstract art than a helpful guide. Had to double back about 3 times to find check-in. The one sign I could find was pointing up and into the ceiling - eventually worked out had to go down. Got in the life and went down 3 floors from level 1 to level 01 - what the heck is that about? Smoking lounges are obnoxious and totally out of date - I’m sitting at the gate now with my children and the lounge is about 30m away but the stench of smoke is terrible hitting the back of my throat. Queues to drop bags were long. Queues for security weren’t too bad but then had extra queues for passport control - good job we got here 3 hours before take-off

Not Verified | After reading all the negative reviews about this airport, I have to say I was more than a little worried about my transit. However, I was worried about nothing. Everything went well - my one hour 20 minutes was plenty of time from arriving off a full international flight and then my transfer through to Paris. No problems at all and the staff at Zurich were nothing but pleasant and friendly. The airport was efficient, spotlessly clean, and honest - because my 84 year old dad, whom I was travelling with, got up from his seat in the terminal and left his small carry bag behind while he went for a walk. I had popped to the bathroom, came back to see his bag on the seat but dad gone! Thank you to the honest people in the airport at that time, who didn't help themselves to his money and other valuables.