Fortunately - courtesy of Ryanair not being able t...

Fortunately - courtesy of Ryanair not being able to give sufficient notice about their strikes - I took a train TO Edinburgh, so I was not left with a dissatisfied feeling throughout my long weekend in Scotland. Sadly, I DID use the airport to leave Edinburgh, and it was enough to ruin the enjoyment of the weekend's trip to the Festival and Tattoo.

Airports KNOW how many people are going to be using them, because people have to BOOK their flights in advance - you don't just turn up unexpectedly. Why, then, do they not provide sufficient staff to cope with the number of people who will need to go through baggage drop and security. They even blocked off the escalators from the check-in area to get to the security checking level, so you were forced to use the stairs or the lifts - and encountered a massive wall of people as soon as you got upstairs. 21 minutes it suggested was the time to get through security - double that was a more accurate estimate. The electronic satisfaction survey on exiting the security area was showing that THREE QUARTERS of respondents were unhappy.

Then we had to wait until some time past the predicted time for our gate to be advertised, and when it finally was, everyone piled along to Gate 3 ... where there was already a full plane load of other people who were waiting for their plane to be boarded, so there was no room, no available seating, a mixture of stoic Brits and less forgiving foreigners, and absolutely NO information as to what was going on. The Tannoy system appeared to be working, as we were subjected to countless final calls for other flights, and adverts for how great Edinburgh airport is (is that right?!!), but nobody had the courtesy to explain why our plane (Ryanair) and the one already at Gate 3 (EasyJet) were so delayed - or why we were both at the same gate.

Once the EasyJet plane eventually left, we Ryanair passengers moved ourselves into the queues as indicated by the EasyJet priority/cattle-class indicators. Some minutes later, the Ryanair staff changed these to their own sign, but with the queue positions reversed, so everyone had to swap to the opposite queue - NOT appreciated. After more tens of minutes waiting in the snake-like queuing lines, Gate 3 suddenly changed to show Gate Closed, and our flight was then advertised on Gate 4's screens, so we all had to move across one gate - climbing underneath the cloth/belt barriers, as we were all well too fed up by then to traipse right the way through the whole snake system.

It was not until we actually got on the plane that the Captain actually apologised for the delay - the first member of staff to do so. If I have any other option in future, I will do everything I can to avoid this airport.

The final weekend of the Edinburgh Festival is going to be busy. Deal with it! It should not be a surprise - and if you cannot deal with it because of your own poor planning or any other unexpected natural disaster, you could at least 1) have the decency to let customers know what is going on, and 2) have the kindness to switch ON those things in the ceiling that look suspiciously like air conditioning units, so that the customers do not melt in a massive pool of perspiration, which could easily cause a slip, trip or fall hazard!

There were people taking phone video footage of this chaos, and I would be very interested to know what the Health and Safety Executive (or its Scottish equivalent) thought of this method of crowd control. Heaven forbid if there had been an emergency and an evacuation had been required.

I was very disappointed, and I feel strongly enough that I have to leave this review so that someone in management at Edinburgh Airport might think more carefully about how they handle this situation in future. Considering the airport sponsors the Tattoo, perhaps you could ask them how they appeared to be considerably more competent and polite in controlling the crowds entering and leaving their venue.