Doncaster-Sheffield Robin Hood Airport?
There are plenty of candidates for title of Worst Airport in the UK. Doncaster-Sheffield Robin Hood airport has to be up there both for its ridiculous name, and location in the middle of a virtually inaccessible field that is not particularly near either Doncaster or Sheffield.
Or London Luton airport?
Then there’s Luton, which is rapidly becoming the Ryanair of airports with its charges to drop people off and get there by bus from the Luton Airport Parkway station. The latter, incidentally, was put in specifically to serve Luton Airport.
Are Stansted and Heathrow worse?
Stansted gets inaccessibility (if you’re not coming from East London) and soullessness black marks, whilst Heathrow attracts the horror stories. To be totally fair to Heathrow, I’ve never had a problem with missing baggage there, but you can pretty much guarantee that any flight due to depart before 10am will be delayed due to the sheer amount of traffic.
Heathrow’s main problem is that for one of the world’s major hubs, it is maddeningly difficult to get to. It’s essentially out on a limb in West London, and if there was any logic at all, it would be properly linked up to the rail network so that direct trains ran from the likes of Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester instead of just Central London.
What makes a good or bad airport?
A lot depends on how you judge an airport. Personally, I couldn’t care less about shopping. Anyone who enjoys shopping in airports is mentally defective as far as I’m concerned. As long as I can get a seat, and some water, I’m pretty much happy.
Anger in Gatwick Airport
Realistically, there is only one criterion that a bad airport needs to be judged on. And that’s how consistently angry I feel when I’m in it. And thus the winner of the UK’s Worst Airport award is… London Gatwick.
Gatwick just seems hopelessly ill-equipped for the task. Check-in queues snake around, seemingly for miles. And this is even when all the check-in desks are being utilised. There are simply too many people, and not enough staff to deal with them.
Gatwick’s muppet factor
Gatwick also has by far the highest muppet factor of any UK airport (and, quite possibly, any place on earth). Walk in there and you seem to be instantly surrounded by high grade idiocy.
If you want to be stood behind the family arguing about being charged for their absurdly overweight bags, Gatwick is the place to go.
It’s also the prime spot for morons attempting to pass off a giant suitcase as hand-luggage, stroll through security with a bag full of liquids and walk through the scanners clad in giant medallions.
The place appears to attract muppets, and I find myself getting riled at every possible juncture whilst in the building.
Families and package holidaymakers?
This may be down to bad luck, but I’ve now used Gatwick enough times to realise that it simply has a higher muppet quotient than any other airport. Why, I’m not sure. My inner snob suggests it’s the numbers of families, package holidaymakers and unambitious travellers who like spending their holidays cocooned in a resort amongst other English people. Either way, there will always be a groan when I realise I have to fly from there.
Am I being fair on Gatwick and the imbeciles that cross its threshold? Or is there a worse airport in the UK? Share your thoughts below by leaving a comment.
Tags: airlines, airport, Doncaster Sheffield Robin Hood Airport, London Gatwick Airport, London Heathrow Airport, London Luton Airport, London Stansted Airport, mass tourism, Transport
I (deliberately) haven’t used Gatwick in a long time, but this has brought it all rushing back to me… The muppet factor – oh yes.
For me, there’s no worse airport than Heathrow. It’s a national disgrace. EVERYTHING is badly designed and counter-intuitive: the most pleasing part of the whole airport is the waiting area at Heathrow bus station (as long as you don’t actually want to catch a bus, since the departures ‘boards’ are a few flat-screen tellys fixed 37 feet off the ground and displaying information in 12pt Arial). As for the train links to and from Heathrow – utter stupidity.
It’s about expectations. I blogged about a bad/good experience in Jeddah airport in Saudi Arabia here:
http://quitealone.com/2009/06/.....ddle-east/
I only had to use it once – maybe if I used it 10 times a year I’d feel different about it – but its boneheaded design and lack of facilities enhanced the experience.
Maybe that’s what foreigners feel about Heathrow – that it’s a kind of endearingly dotty window into the British mindset. Do they? It would be quite interesting to do a poll and find out…
Definitely Heathrow. It is absolutely awful. Every time I have had to fly through there, I allow twice as much time as I think I’ll need and I’m still rushed because of constant construction, poor directions, etc. Not to mention the number of times I’m told my flight is canceled or delayed “but we can get you on a different flight that leaves from a different terminal in 20 minutes so grad your bags and run.” I avoid Heathrow wherever possible.
Flew into Luton from Poprad, Slovakia last year and had quite a pleasant experience, in that I saw as little of the airport for as short a time as possible. Interestingly, it has a dedicated immigration lane for non-EU passport holders, which on my flight was basically – me. So I rocketed to the front of the queue and was off the flight and out of the airport within 15 minutes.
Then the ticket machine for the bus to the train station wasn’t working, so I hopped on the bus expecting someone to ask me to pay there, and they never did. Odd. I agree it’s a disgrace to expect peoople to pay for that bus, it’s specifically there as a short-hop connection to the airport’s designated train station. Besides which, quite a few people must come off a flight without any British currency handy for the bus fare.
@tim – I love the way that dividing the passport queues into EU and non-EU often have the completely opposite effect to what is intended. I believe they’re meant to speed things up for EU passengers. In reality, there’s usually a scrum around the EU queue, while a bored chap processes the two passports per hour going through the non-EU queue.
@fiona – I don’t tend to have too many issues once at Heathrow (aside from the almost inevitable flight delay). But getting there is a complete pain in the butt. Why on earth is it not better connected to the rail network?
I don’t think I’ve had a really bad experience at Heathrow, but Gatwick! I still dine out on the story about the check-in clerk who had to send for her superior, because my ticket said Xania and the aircraft was going to Chania.
Bristol’s pretty good … but London/City is still top of my list.