There can’t be many more depressing experiences than turning up at Gatwick Airport’s North Terminal in pouring rain for a pre-dawn flight that may or may not take off on time and hoping your checked-in luggage makes it to your destination.
It’s like arriving at a drab industrial warehouse, albeit one that whacks you with a £10 drop-off charge (rising to £100 if not paid by midnight the next day), and then requires taking either a tinny lift to reach Level One, or riding the travelator angled at an awkward 35 degrees, which moves at a snail’s pace but still barks ‘Caution’ as you finally reach the finish line.
Come to think of it, one even more depressing experience does come to mind – and that’s arriving back into that same dismal terminal a week or two later and finding trolleys with wonky wheels; bags dumped by a broken carousel; toilets out of soap; staff who might just as well be herding chickens as you reach immigration, and no one knowing where Ubers pick up passengers.
Arriving into the UK is worse than leaving the country because airports know that departing passengers spend considerably more time hanging around in the terminal than those flying in, which means there’s a greater chance they’ll spend money in shops and food outlets.
Inbound passengers just want to flee the place as fast as they can.
Our airports are a national embarrassment. Arrivals at a British terminal is the first thing any visitor from abroad sees – and first impressions are important.
But rather than advertising a country that’s functioning properly, a country with a smile on its face, a country which takes pride in its culture and believes in its future, the UK’s 25 or so main passenger airports are glaring examples of sluggish growth, inefficiency and low morale.
Some are creaking more than others but almost all are architecturally moribund, uninspiring, chaotic, ruinously expensive (nearly £5 for a latte at a Heathrow Starbucks and £7.15 for a tomato and mozzarella panini at Luton) and overcrowded.
It’s like arriving at a drab industrial warehouse, albeit one that whacks you with a £10 drop-off charge – rising to £100 if not paid by midnight the next day
In various worldwide surveys conducted in the past 12 months, no British airport has made it into the top 50, except for Heathrow Terminal 5, which, let’s face it, flatters to deceive.
Yes, T5’s expansive main concourse has an element of excitement to it, but, then, once through security, you descend into a dingy basement, with nothing like the amount of seating required for what is the country’s one and only hub airport, through which millions of travellers transfer.
But we’ve become largely immune to the horrors of our airports, not least because most of us fly only once or twice a year. And so, in true British fashion, we simply grimace and bare it, staring at the departures board, counting down the minutes to when we’ll be on our way to sunnier climes.
Business class travellers are cocooned somewhat as they take refuge in various lounges (which themselves can be overcrowded) – but what none of us can get away from is the ugliness, the queueing, and the acceptance that a family of four will be charged as much as £50 for a round of hot drinks and undercooked bacon rolls.
‘Welcome to Britain’ is the message plastered to walls along the various arrivals corridors, complete with glossy posters of smiling Tower of London Beefeaters, but it’s a hollow greeting, especially once you reach the e-gates at Passport Control and find they’re closed (‘Sorry for any inconvenience caused’) due to yet another technical fault.
Skytrax – a UK-based consultancy that runs the annual World Airline and Airport Star Ratings – will announce its 2026 winners and losers next month. No one expects Britain’s airports to appear in the list of winners, but we should feature prominently in the losers’ league table.
Last year, London Stansted and Manchester Airport were named among the world’s worst, which is consistent with the most recent Which? survey of UK airports. It has Manchester rooted to the bottom for the fourth consecutive year, with Luton one place above.
Exeter, Liverpool John Lennon and London City were placed first, second and third, respectively across 10 categories, including customer service, wait time for baggage, security queues, availability of seating, plus the range of shops and food outlets.
‘Unlike in many other countries, where gleaming airports are symbols of national pride and genuinely places you might want to spend some time, ours are grim reminders of how customer satisfaction has been sacrificed because the Civil Aviation Authority regulator allows airports to overcharge both airlines and consumers,’ said Julia Simpson, former CEO of World Travel & Tourism Council.
Singapore’s Changi Airport has consistently been named the world’s best and has become a tourist destination in its own right, with Singapore families spending a whole day there – for pleasure. The idea of an outing to Heathrow or Gatwick as a family treat is preposterous.
Last year, London Stansted and Manchester Airport were named among the world’s worst, which is consistent with the most recent Which? survey of UK airports (Travel writer Mark Palmer pictured at Manchester Airport)
Changi’s big reveal is The Jewel, a 10-storey complex directly linked to the airport’s three terminals that features the Rain Vortex, the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, plunging 40 metres through a lush rainforest canopy. People love it so much that some choose to get married there.
I passed through Hong Kong airport before Christmas on the way to Australia. It was a revelation.
My Cathay Pacific flight from London was running late, meaning there was only 30 minutes to transfer. I assumed that even if I made it, my suitcase didn’t stand a chance. But all transferring passengers were met by airport staff and accompanied to our onward departure gate – and the luggage was on board, too.
All rather different to Manchester Airport, which I visited this week, arriving on a late-running, litter-strewn train from Manchester Piccadilly station.
I was due to meet the Daily Mail’s photographer (who was charged £21.20 to park for 1 hour 11 minutes) at Terminal 3 departures, which meant a hideous 15 minute walk from the station with views of blackened concrete multi-storey car parks, roundabouts, barbed wire fencing and dreary hotels.
Almost all the ‘autowalks’, as the airport calls the moving walkways, were out of order, and the signage was so misleading that I took the same wrong lift twice. I reached Terminal 3 in the end and made for the information desk to seek assistance because nowhere could I see the word ‘Departures’. ‘Terminal 3 departures are now from Terminal 1,’ said a member of the airport staff. ‘I know it’s confusing.’
Only Ryanair currently operates from Terminal 1 – although, to ratchet up the confusion, Ryanair passengers check in at Terminal 1 but actually fly out from, and back into, Terminal 3.
Conversely, Manchester’s new T2, which is now fully open after nearly 10 years of construction at a cost of £1.3billion, is an example of what can be achieved. It has plenty of natural light and motivated, willing staff are on hand to direct traffic.
Indeed, the state of Britain’s airports hasn’t always been this dire. When Stansted’s terminal – designed by Normal Foster’s firm – opened in 1991, it was hailed as an architectural marvel, not least because of its ‘floating roof’.
But it was built to cope with up to 15million passengers a year. Today, some 30million passengers pass through it and this will rise to 51million by 2040, once the £1.1billion expansion programme is completed.
Singaporean families spend a whole day at Changi Airport for pleasure – but the idea of an outing to Heathrow or Gatwick as a family treat is preposterous
Not that I hold out hope that this will improve things. The customer experience at Stansted is dismal, even with the addition over the years of various extra buildings. It’s overcrowded at peak times, with long waits at security. If the scanners picked up on frustration, they would all be beeping furiously.
After security, you walk through a gauntlet of duty free shops, followed by a sea of chain restaurants. The usual suspects are there – Burger King, Wetherspoons, Giraffe, Starbucks, Costa – all hiking their prices to cover the cost of their exorbitant rents.
Heathrow, which accounts for one in four of all arrivals into the UK, is widely regarded as the most expensive airport in the world, with passenger charges roughly twice those of other major global hubs, hence the continual stand-off between the airport and major international airlines. And the irony is that although hundreds of British Airways planes are based at Heathrow, sporting their Union flag tail fins, the airport itself is not a UK company.
Air passengers using the electronic devices for immigration and passport control at UK Border Control in Gatwick Airport
It falls under the umbrella of Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd, which is owned by FGP Topco Ltd, a consortium led by French company Ardian (32.6 per cent), Qatar Investment Authority (20 per cent), the Saudi Public Investment Fund (15 per cent), Singaporean GIC (11 per cent), Australian Retirement Trust (11 per cent) and China Investment Corporation (10 per cent).
Nothing remotely British about that lot – and the CEO is Thomas Woldbye, a Dane and former boss of Copenhagen Airport, who was asleep during the electrical outage last year, which closed the airport and affected operations for nearly two days.
‘It breaks my heart to know that Heathrow is entirely foreign-owned,’ said Surinder Arora, the British-Indian billionaire businessman, whose company, Arora, owns hotels including the Sofitel at both Heathrow and Gatwick. ‘We keep selling off the family silver to the highest bidder when what’s really needed is fundamental change.’
Mr Arora, 67, is a founding member of the Heathrow Reimagined group – along with Virgin Atlantic, International Airlines Group and American Airlines – which is calling for a fundamental review of the airport’s regulatory framework.
‘The more Heathrow spends on capital projects, the more it charges airlines and those costs are passed on to passengers,’ he says.
So a new train link, terminal or runway means pricier flights, car park fees and lattes for us all.
Julia Simpson agrees: ‘These investors get guaranteed dividends that then leave this country. They have no interest in the excessive charges paid by the airlines and their customers. Visitors to the UK represent almost 10 per cent of our economy, but this doesn’t feature on Rachel Reeves’s agenda.’
My urgent query would be one shared with millions of others: what can be done to make us proud of our airports rather than approaching them with shame and dread?
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Heathrow Reimagined also wants to see the introduction of competition at the airport – for example allowing third parties to build and operate terminal buildings.
‘It’s completely wrong that Heathrow should be in control of parking, for example. It means they can charge what they want – and they do,’ said Mr Arora. ‘To make passengers pay for being dropped off at the airport is shocking and unnecessary if the company was fit for purpose’.
Heathrow refutes this. ‘More passengers are choosing to fly through Heathrow. That’s because we’ve invested to improve passenger experience and become more efficient,’ said a spokesman. ‘We want to work with airlines to unlock more growth and build on our success as Europe’s most punctual hub and the best-connected in the world.’
I also visited Luton Airport, used mainly by easyJet, Jet2, Tui, Wizz Air and Ryanair. There are plans here for a new terminal after the government gave its consent last year, despite a Planning Inspectorate recommendation that it should be rejected on environmental grounds.
Reaching Luton Airport from London is now reasonably simple by train from St Pancras International to Luton Parkway – from where you take the Dart air-rail shuttle. This shuttle, not dissimilar to the one between Gatwick North and South, costs £5 per person each way for a ride of no more than three and a half minutes.
Luton’s current terminal is another warehouse filled to the brim with human cargo, some of whom may or may not be tempted to buy a Guinness at The Fletton pub for just short of £8.
‘Your adventure starts here,’ says a sign near the Information Desk, where I stopped to ask a couple of questions. But it was unmanned. ‘Sorry, we will be back at the desk soon. If your query is urgent, please use the phone handset,’ said a notice.
My urgent query would be one shared with millions of others: what can be done to make us proud of our airports rather than approaching them with shame and dread?
