London Luton Airport Recensioni 834

Mid stay car park, charged £15 for a 3 minute stay while dropping a family member off - Heathrow & Gatwick (far superior airports) don’t even charge that much. Absolute rip off and won’t be using airport again.

I’m not one for negative review but Luton Airport is honestly one of the worst airport experiences I’ve had. The entire terminal feels completely overcrowded from the moment you enter. There are people everywhere, barely enough room to move, and almost nowhere to sit down because every available seat is taken. It feels like the airport is operating far beyond what it can comfortably handle.

The pricing inside the terminal is also an absolute rip off. Food, drinks, and basic essentials are outrageously expensive, and passengers are effectively trapped inside with little alternative once through security.

The biggest issue, however, is the poor gate management. Gates appear to be announced unnecessarily late, leaving huge crowds of passengers packed into the central terminal area for long periods of time. It genuinely creates the impression that passengers are intentionally kept near the shops, bars, and restaurants for as long as possible to maximise spending opportunities rather than improve the travel experience.

At some point, leadership seriously needs to ask itself whether this airport is being run for passengers or for spreadsheets. The experience feels like it is being managed by accountants staring at bar graphs and revenue targets instead of people who actually understand customer service, comfort, and operational flow. Passenger experience should come before squeezing every possible pound out of overcrowded terminals.

The toilets and queue management were equally terrible. Long queues everywhere, poor organisation, and facilities that clearly cannot cope with the number of people using them. The whole airport experience felt stressful, chaotic, and badly managed from start to finish.

Luton Airport needs leadership that prioritises efficiency, comfort, and passenger wellbeing instead of profits at all costs. Until that changes, I would strongly recommend travellers use a different airport wherever possible because this one is absolutely terrible.

Extremely disappointing experience at London Luton Airport Departure security.

Today there were two parallel security queues operating side by side, but the right-side queue was moving approximately four times slower than the left one for no visible reason.

We spent over 60 minutes standing in line and still had not even reached the actual security screening area, while passengers in the neighboring queue continued moving much faster.

What made the situation worse was the complete lack of communication and coordination from staff. Nobody explained the delays, nobody redirected passengers, and there appeared to be no effort to manage the flow fairly.

This created unnecessary stress, frustration, and a real concern about missing flights.

For a major international airport serving London, this level of organization is simply unacceptable.

Luton Airport is truly a masterpiece of modern airport priorities — a shining example of how to extract every possible pound from passengers while giving almost nothing back once they arrive.

The airport authorities have clearly spared no expense when it comes to things that generate revenue: beautiful multi-storey car parks, fast rail links, endless taxi access, shiny bus stations, shops, bars, restaurants and premium drop-off zones everywhere you look. Departing passengers are treated like valued guests — because they still have money left to spend.

Arriving passengers, however, are a completely different story.

The moment you land, you instantly transform from “valued customer” into “human cargo”. You are funnelled into endless queues, herded through overcrowded corridors and left standing for hours in conditions that would embarrass many third-world transport hubs.

Apparently, the airport’s solution to this problem is fresh paint, motivational stickers on the walls and new floor markings — because clearly what exhausted passengers trapped in a 1.5-hour passport queue really need is colourful branding while they slowly lose the will to live.

I have watched this airport expand for over 20 years. Every year there are new ways to charge passengers more money. New retail areas. New parking systems. New transport links. New ways to monetise every square metre of space.

And yet, after two decades, absolutely nothing meaningful has been done to improve the arrival experience or the completely unacceptable passport control bottlenecks.

Why? Because arriving passengers are no longer useful. They have already paid for parking, transport, food and airport services. Financially speaking, they are now worthless to the airport.

It is genuinely embarrassing that outside peak season, the arrival of just three aircraft can completely paralyse passport control and block the entire terminal. Waiting over 90 minutes simply to clear border control is not an “operational challenge” — it is a failure of management, planning and basic respect for passengers.

During summer, these waiting times regularly double or even triple, yet somehow this continues to be treated as normal.

At what point do the airport authorities finally decide that arriving passengers deserve the same level of investment, planning and respect as departing ones?

Or is the strategy simply:
“Thanks for your money — now stand in line and suffer quietly.”

Airport that runs parking scams on the side. It is not bad enough that you need to pay £7 for dropping someone off, but you have to pay online - which is slow and flimsy. No option to pay at the airport and people a lot of the time do not remember to pay and then have to pay £60 fine which is exactly what they planned. Was visiting Luton when they had payment machines and there were never any congestion, so this is deliberate to scam money out of people who just dropped off or picked up relatives and will not be thinking about paying when they get back home. Scummy corporations are getting even scummier.

I had a very disappointing experience with Luton Airport Parking regarding an overstay charge. The email confirmation instructions are misleading, as they strongly imply that the overstay charge must be paid in advance, when in reality it is significantly cheaper to pay onsite.
After following the email instructions, I later discovered the price difference and had to make several complaints before I eventually received a refund of the difference. While the money was corrected in the end, the time and effort wasted chasing this issue was completely unnecessary.
Clear and accurate instructions should be provided upfront. Instead, the process feels misleading and puts the burden on customers to identify the problem, chase repeatedly, and raise complaints.
I have since raised formal complaints with both Luton Airport and APCOA, which are still pending, but this situation is unacceptable. Customers should not have to escalate complaints simply to avoid being overcharged due to unclear or misleading communications.

I would earnestly suggest that Luton Airport is the very worst airport in Europe. It should be utterly demolished. You arrive on a plane from North Africa [Tunisia] which has totally modernised airports, and you arrive at London-Luton at an airport that is totally unfit for the 21st Century.

After your plane arrives at Luton, you have to clamber down a mobile ladder onto the apron where the plane has arrived. You then have to walk 75 metres to a walkway leading to the arrivals building. You are forced to climb a staircase upstairs to a corridor leading to Passport Control. The corridor is long and windy [about 500 metres]. At the end of this corridor you have to go downstairs, goosey, goosey gander-fashion: upstairs downstairs in my lady's chamber-fashion.

You then arrive at Passport Control in a room whose size is unfit for purpose which looks more like a farmers' Saturday market for livestock. you then pass though onto the Baggage delivery room which is also completely of a size unfit for purpose, where the baggage belts handle the arrival of luggage from 3 or 4 planes. Chaos results.

The toilets stink in this area. And you have to pay for luggage trolleys [cheap-skatery].

This is a municipally-run airport. I would not want to move to Luton if all its public services were run like its airport.

Dropped wife off at 5.30AM at usual drop off/pick up point, only to be charged £15 for a 60 second stay. Nobody there to question either. Whoever thought this was a reasonable and respectful way to treat patrons should tender their resignation and return to their hole in the ground. Shocking.

I was searched at Luton airport because the alarm went off in security for no apparent reason. The security person patted down the front of my trousers and put his bare hands inside my underwear to feel round the waistband. When he could find nothing he just waved me on with a flick of the hand. I was so disgusted I took the train home so I wouldn't have to set foot in that airport again. I wrote a complaint which they responded saying their officer had done nothing wrong. I wrote back twice asking for a manager to review (which they say is the next step if you have an unsatisfactory reply). They never contacting me again. Despicable service. The worst airport I've been to. Avoid!!!

Airport security staff are so rude. Unnecessary they have a hard job, but no regard to the passengers who at the end of the day are there clients

Luton - clean, good frequent, free bus services to Car hire, good twilight baggage check in service. Without the security issues, this would be 5.

Abysmal slow security especially line 11.
Very very busy with Easter travellers. Almost every other tray was sidelined for inspection holding everything up. To give extra context, plenty of folk on hand before the scanners and the queues moved quickly. Things slowed at the scanner with trays backing up.

I was through the whole body scanner quickly but then found the many waiting on the trays to come through. Everyone was in everyone else’s way. There was only 1 person on checking the trays on the line. A little sense from security managers - security is important but if every other or third bag is to be manually checked, surely another 1 or 2 people checking would not only speed the queues but improve accuracy and security. A thought.

My tray was side lined. No checks were made. A waste of time, patience, congestion and several people rushing to get their flight.

Luton you got lots of things right. Your security is pants.

Don't use any car parks, prepare yourself to pay 15£ for 3 minutes in midstay carpal...no information to stop you is a new trap to grab your money from your wallet...is not free anymore

Bad experience overall, big queues, little English spoken by security so therefore no help when your things are MISSING from the tray that you just left it with them to scan it.

Hello everyone, today I had a flight to Chisinau and once again an unpleasant experience from the airport staff... more precisely from the people who check the luggage.....I have a small child and I use the casserole for the child's food. I have flown several times with this casserole but today there was a person who consumed my time, my nerves. Threatening me that if I don't fill out a sheet I won't be able to fly and that the police will be called, thus missing the flight.... Because of this I had several unpleasant situations with this flight.

I work inside the airport and I've come to realise there is no system or care for actually helping customers, I've had multiple people come to me today with an issue that had nothing to do with me but because other departments don't understand the processes the customers are being made to go back and forth for the same issue and when I try to contact someone to save the customers walking everywhere, the phone lines are nearly always not responding even though it states the line is still open and when they do respond I often get told nothing can be done and to go complain where they can. As a worker in the airport it is becoming a major inconvenience to customers and myself who would like to help them get their problem sorted as soon as possible but with the lack of communication of processes and unavailability this has become a close to impossible task. I would ask that any higher up or person in authority that sees this doesn't take it to heart and makes sure the whole airport has correct communications, understanding and effort towards helping a customer in the future

A "parking" charge of £7 for a 3 min drop off - which is not parking at all - adds £14 to the ticket price as they run a monopoly with no regulation. Why this charge at all as you already pay for the airport via your ticket. It should be added when you book a ticket to be transparent.

And no services at all for drivers who have often driven often over an hour to bring their customers in only to be abused with the drop-off charge eg toilets and coffee, you have to go to the M1 to find those.

Easy Jet is a good airline, its choice of Luton airport an unfortunate choice.
The good part - Priority Parking - it works well and is not too expensive.
Check in - Easyjet very good
Security was good
Food - overpriced and mediocre quality with poor service.
The WORST is baggage reclaim. Slow , indifferent. We waited 30 minutes due to a technical problem. The belt next to it was free. Sadly moving baggage is too much effort. Some garbled PA apologises to " guests". Had we left Cairo and arrived back in the UK. In Cairo things actually work!

Appalling customer service. Arrived last night and held in a corridor for over 20 minutes, which then led to a very full passport control area. Only a handful of E gates open. The guest experience staff were rude and unapologetic. took well over an hour to get through; all this technology has made everything worse. UK airports are generally very poor compared to their European neighbours.

I HATE THIS AIRPORT, I WILL NEVER BE RETURNING EVER AGAIN, THEY THOUGHT THEIR WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY BAG, THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH MY BAG. RUDE RUDE PEOPLE, I HATE LUTON, I LOVE GATWICK.

Absolutely appalling experience at Luton Airport, specifically the Mid Stay Car Park. I was charged a ridiculous amount for literally 2 minutes, and there is no clear signage warning drivers about these rip-off charges. It feels deliberately set up to trap customers rather than inform them. Do not use to drop off or pick up, it was once free, which they are exploiting to their full advantage! Its actully unbelievable this is allowed. But then again its Luton Council! I am a resident of Luton.

The whole operation comes across as predatory. These third-party operators are nothing more than sharks, exploiting people who are just trying to drop off or pick up passengers. No transparency, no fairness, and no accountability.

Before Luton Airport even thinks about getting a new runway, they should focus on running the current airport properly. Focus less on it being a shopping center where you can catch flights. If you can’t manage parking honestly and clearly, you have no business expanding. Allowing third-party entrepreneurial sharks to operate like this only damages the airport’s reputation further.

This airport prioritises squeezing money out of customers over basic decency and clear communication.