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'Heathrow voted least favourite airport'.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/ma...irport-130.xml

A shame to hear this is the case, but is it just down to all the construction work for T5 and restoration of the other terminals? Or the large number of pax travelling through its doors??

It also mentioned that AA are starting some of their transatlantic flights from Stansted. Will Stansted be voted the next 'least favourite airport' when it needs to be expanded??

Looks like airlines are cashing in with Heathrow's unpopularity.

That EGLL is the least favourite is neither a Rumour nor News. :}

The problems are deep seated (20+ years) and, one may reasonably presume, AA researched from where else their clients might like to travel. LHR will have to get a lot worse before people leave it in sufficient numbers for real change to occur. Within the confines of successive government non-policy, this field will always be hobbled.

Somebody actually got paid to conduct a survey for this? I'd have told them the same for free:ugh:

Now there's a revelation... :D

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Will Stansted be voted the next 'least favourite airport' when it needs to be expanded??

Where have you been! I go through Stansted regularly. Last week, it took 1.15 to get through check-in and security. It has the misfortune to be run by that abysmal organisation BAA, with it's AWFUL security people and those morons in green uniforms walking around like concentration camps guards barking orders at people. I always stand there laughing at them thinking that they think they are sheepdogs to our sheep! They're idiots. I had the ugliest woman in security shouting at me that my carry on bag (pilot briefcase) was 'more than 10kgs, you can't take this with you!' I laughed at the cow. She forgot she wasn't Ryanair check in staff!

So Stansted has outgrown its design already. What I will say is how pleasant and courteous UK Immigration staff are these days. How nice to have at least somebody speak nice to you in those BAA hell-holes! Quite simply, I think BAA has decided too many people are flying these days, and they are trying to kill off aviation in the UK, and stop people using the UK for transits. They are admirably succeeding in their self-appointed task.

Arrived LHR '85 from Aus, end of immigration line. Sign on wall flashing: "Welcome to Heathrow, the most efficient airport in the world" or somesuch nonsense. Didn't catch my connecting flight to FBU even though we landed AHEAD of schedule. Never liked LHR since.
Per

Heathrow sucks chunks. It is a pain in the backside & I don't know anyone who will go through it if they can reasonably avoid doing so. I can't think of anything attractive about the place.

Impressive performance by BAA. 2 airports in the top 10 and 3 in the top 20.

Not really a surprise.

To be avoided, if at all possible. An absolute dump.

An awful place from start to finish.

This piece appeared on a Popular HK blog 'Hemlock'. I have put it on PPrune before but some may have missed it:

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Surely – any moderate-minded person with an ounce of common sense and a pinch of healthy skepticism will assure themselves – the stories we read about the abomination that is Heathrow Airport are at least slightly exaggerated. This is my feeling as the British Airways 747 Megatube descends gracefully past the green and pleasant sewage treatment plants of London's western suburbs and approaches runway 27L. Washington DC's Dulles Airport has improved its procedures noticeably since my last visit, with immigration and (virtually non-existent) customs lines and procedures taking barely 10 minutes. The UK capital's main airport, while on an admittedly bigger scale, must have continued adapting more or less as well to the needs of the post-2001, War on Terror, no-shampoo-allowed era of international travel.
My first task on landing is to stand in the aisle and cut off the oaf who has been sitting in front of me, squirming, stretching and testing the load-bearing capacity of his seat in every way imaginable for seven hours. Trapping the hyperactive claustrophobe in his little space for an extra five minutes while we wait for the doors to open will serve as punishment for not calmly submitting to the confines of the cabin and Sitting Still like everyone else. On being released from the airplane, the procession of travellers strides noisily down a ramp and along a narrow, ill-lit corridor. The herd then turns right into another gloomy tunnel, with little portholes on one side revealing rows of docked airliners from around the world. We then trundle to the left, into yet another murky channel, with barely enough room for sensible people who carry bags on their shoulders to kick idiots' space-consuming little cases on wheels out of the way. This 100-yard stretch of prefabricated structure and nylon carpet has framed pictures of cute animals along one wall, which naturally puts everyone into a relaxed mood of sublime well-being. The next leg of the journey is along a passage that is twice as wide as the previous ones, the extra space being occupied by a moving walkway that is out of order.

At this stage, passengers connecting to onward flights are prodded into another area, where they are sorted by size and forced to remove their shoes before passing through a series of security checks just like the ones they went through on the other side of the Atlantic. The rest of us proceed along yet another dimly lit hallway, this time sloping upwards, until we reach a large, temporary looking hall into a crowd of people of every colour and creed on the planet, wearing a wide variety of bright ethnic outfits. They are Government officials, tasked to sift through every batch of arrivals, sending us into different lines according to whether we hold UK, Irish, European Union member state, Norwegian, Swiss or – for the truly unfortunate – 'other' passports.

The latter group get the privilege of joining an extremely long line of humanity, snaking its way into the distance. At the end of it, the victims parade one by one into a bare, concrete chamber where a burly man in a leather apron puts a stun gun to their forehead and hoists them up by their legs onto a suspended hook on a cable that transports them into a rendering facility where they are processed for pet food. The rest of us, after standing in line for ages reading posters saying our patience is appreciated, are eventually allowed to pass the immigration desks. I am asked where I have flown in from and take a full 20 seconds to remember. After picking my way along yet another strip of furry artificial flooring and through a cavern full of conveyor belts where fools who check baggage in lie in starving piles waiting to be bulldozed into mass graves, I get to Her Majesty's Customs. Overweight, uniformed women let black sniffer dogs rub their disgusting wet noses against people's luggage. Interestingly, the canines choose to check only travellers that are their own colour. I stroll through and out into a welcoming area full of loud announcements, even louder signage and grim-looking people waiting to greet their loved ones or pre-booked taxi customers. This is where Heathrow proper starts. It is so vile, I can't bring myself to describe it.

Well, I'm flying to Narita week after next and Virgin has just advised me that I will be using the new arrivals "wing" at T3 which has private security. I realise that that is not an exactly mainstream way of getting through but shows what can be done to ease the problem.
Quite frankly, I think there are airports far worse...
Boston, almost criminally incompetent. Last time trying to get through to B gates; one walk-thru, two x-ray machines, about two hundred passengers and crew winding back through the terminal all "managed" by five TSA morons playing marine drill sergeant....1hr 10mins
Newark: Lufthansa, BA, Silverjet arrive.....six Immigration and Border boothes including "for residents". Actually only five because the guy in one kept on coming out to threaten people for using phones who were trying to explain to pick-ups that they would be delayed getting through.
The reality is that all commercial flying is a right royal PITA these days and the carriers who are going to win the high paying premium business are those who are starting to offer services such as EOS and Silverjet. Even Virgin are looking at business only services although, I understand, not with current branding. Premium routes in and out of airports although no doubt expensive, are very attractive.

We (ie the politicians) have let low grade staff take over administration of our airports (BAA). People who are barely qualified to work in McDs, and management who appear to be inept former civil servants, are now running (joke) things, charging ever more, and all they can think of is maximising revenue by opening more shops, which people can't get to because they are stuck in security queues! So what happens? Having made a total pigs ear of running the airport, they sell up to foreigners ('here- you have the keys and see if you can make it go- I can't!). Now the Spanish are no doubt looking at this mess they've paid a lot of money for wondering how they can get money back from it. The stupid politicians who gave the whole shooting match to incompetents (BAA) in the first place are now looking in horror at the position we are in- having sold it they can hardly take it back off the Spanish. So there is no solution, the airlines at LHR are screaming in disgust, the BAA staff are screaming at the customers like concentration camp guards, everybody hates the place (and is screaming), and at last the customers (passengers) are getting the word and will quite simply stay away. It took so long to just get planning permission for T5 that Madrid's new terminal was designed and built within that time alone. What hope for a new runway? Aeroplanes are already hitting each other on the ground. Heads (of BAA) should be removed at the Tower and placed on spikes at the entrance to the tunnel. The place is a nightmare, and the politicians have left us with no solution!
(from: 'History of London Airports and their Rape by BAA'. Rainboe 2007)

You mention Terminal 4 at Barajas. I reckon that T5 will be no match: it will be crowded from day one.

Thank you for that, Load Toad - some of that is priceless, particularly the last para :)

I have two words to say about Heathrow and the second one is "Heathrow"

I do a shed load of travel with my work, most of it to locations outside the UK. I have to admit that I have and will continue to do everything in my power to avoid travelling through LHR STN & MAN. LGW is in the dubious category, but I have to say that the problem is that BAA still believe that they are in some ways UK Governmat civil servants (i.e job for life regardless of how poor their performance is) even although its years since BAA were privatised and sold off. The fact that they are now employees of a Spanish company might make its way to the forefront of their three cell brains in about seventy to ninety years time and then they might want to think about customer service and satisfaction.

I used to do a lot of EDI-ATL-IAH until Delta pulled the ATL flight last month and I have to say that immigration, customs clearance and transfer at ATL was an absolute breeze, even when the flights were late. Loads of Immigration agents and superb Customs services. I have to pass through LHR tomorrow:eek::eek::eek: on my way back from SIN, & everyone I'm travelling with is dreading the thought:uhoh:.

As soon as Etihad, Emirates, Singapore, BMI, Air Canada, Zoom etc. start to increase direct or one stop transatlantic, far east and other services from EDI, GLA, NCL etc, the better.:ok:

London is NOT the centre of the universe!!!!!!!

Well, no surprise of course. The sad truth is that almost every single airport you visit anywhere in the world provides a better passenger experience than almost every UK airport.

A couple of things still amaze me. First, whenever BAA get their marketing heads together for another brainstorm "hey guys, how do we improve the customer experience blah"?, all it seems to produce is ghastly retail initiatives. If only they would actually ask the customer, just once.

Second I think BA are too willing to play the victim card at Heathrow. I like BA, and rate them well above average. BA spend a lot of marketing (and other) dollars to sustain that opinion in me. But since they abandoned the provinces, I avoid BA whenever possible as it involves LHR transit. What is BA doing to maximise its wasted marketing dollars with me? Surely they can concoct a few bright ideas to help the rest of the UK transit through Heathrow, BAA or no BAA? Where's the innovation?

Rainboe or Paxboy (forget who) made a very good point about BA strategically contracting its business, but if they helped fix LHR transit they'd rocket their business overnight. Maybe T5 will fix this, we'll see. As it is I defect from my favourite airline as soon as another carrier opens a direct routing from Man or indeed anywhere that avoids LHR transit.

Ah Manchester, but that's another story too. Remember the old classy T1, landside with the Venetian chandeliers, airside with big glassy spaces overlooking the apron. All gone as they pursue the retail dollar. Which idiot plonked up that pre-fab WH Smiths, totally blocking out the multi-£m glass exterior wall so lovingly built not 10 years ago? :sad:

BA is just another tenant at this BAA owned airport, and as such, I assume must be in despair. It suffers the consequences of the BAA owned and operated infrastructure. The ghastly record of baggage disasters comes largely from the baggage conveyor breakdowns of the last couple of years, the fallout of which obviously comes on the airline.

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First, whenever BAA get their marketing heads together for another brainstorm "hey guys, how do we improve the customer experience blah"?,

....this made me laugh. 'Customer experience'? It's 'How can we screw more money out of all those nauseating people who keep coming here?'. Hence ever more retail space (which hardly anyone can actually use because they are stuck in security queues with several lanes closed).

They actually do one thing superbly well. They are fantastic at setting up those zig zag queue lanes that have you eternally shuffling past the same people, whilst those green uniformed idiot sheepdogs go running up and down shouting at you. For that, I forget the amount, but they screw an incredible 'Passenger Security charge' per person out of the airlines. I find the whole experience of LHR/LGW/STN offensive. Nowhere else I go do crew as passengers get screamed at for allowing their ID to show, with threats to confiscate them. Someone who can barely read anything beyond the Daily Mirror barking orders at me.............?

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Heathrow sucks chunks

Load Toad, that quote is absolutely priceless!

I haven't laughed so much since Auntie Mabel caught her left titty in the mangle!

P L E A S E - can someone get some car stickers and tee shirts rustled up with this slogan! It might just provide the catalyst needed to spur some action into cleaning up our dreadful, dreadful airport!

Now, your next challenge, Load Toad, should you wish to accept it, is to come up with a similar priceless gem for Gatwick - another experience a "developing world country" would be ashamed of!

Thanks to Load Toad, for that happy rendition of his experences on arrival at our Premier international Aerodrome ! (look no props ) - I have to advise my fellow travelers; that the litany unleashed , regarding the treatment of foreign passport holders is bang on correct ! :hmm:- Welcome to Britian - :bored: - if you were on the delayed BA arriving from SFO,, two sunday's Ago ( the later flight ) - Please add the Two hour wait for luggage - and you did not mention the grease marks on those tired looking murals where the Guards mount an attempt to catch that Red "Route master" Bus - A technical masterpiece !!!!! - unlike the drab prefabricated - look what you can do with 300 Quid's worth of concreate, international welcome mat to the big wide world. - PS thanks to BA on replacing the leaking 400 on the outbound SFO in 3 hours flat. First impressions count - This place is a poor pasenger hub.