BAA London Stansted Reviews

Possibly the worst airport in the UK.

First let us start with the location. "London" Stansted. This airport is not in London. It's practically in the middle of nowhere. Transport links are terrible. If you decide to drive beware of the criminal carparking charges. Stansted management should be ashamed of themselves for charging such prices.

Then we move to the layout of the airport. Who designed this monstrosity? The airport hasn't been designed for customer convenience. It's actually been designed to make customers spend money. You are forced to walk through the duty free area on the way to the lounge. If you are running late for your plane please beware as there is no alternative route, you have to walk through 1km of shops with people walking slowly killing time.

The lounge itself is overcrowded. No free seats so people are forced to sit on the dirty floor. The lounge resembles a refugee camp which you might find in Calais.

Terrible airport, avoid at all costs. Use Gatwick if possible and then Heathrow which is bad but not as bad as Stansted.

Had to wait 2 hours to collect bags. Joke. Parking is also very expensive.

I was picking someone up at the airport and used the free mid stay car Park, rather than the very expensive pick up/ drop off point!



The terminal is large enough not too feel cramped but small enough that you don't have excessively long walks!

Airport all rotten never seen its of my life waiting time too long everywhere all the staff are very unpleasant lack of serious also prefer Luton with easyjet Ryanair never again

It's an airport. Does what you expect it to do. Overcharge you for everything and gets you on your flight to wherever your going to

Unkind airport staff, even unkind than usual, way too busy, way too little space, super dirty toilets and 100 km through crowds of people before you reach the gate. Yes I can advise everyone to pay a little more and fly to Heathrow.

Pivot of Ryanair. Tickets for the National Express can be obtained right after arrival. I would recommend money in Germany. The course is in my opinion really modest when exchanging in England. Shops are sufficiently available. Toilets are clean. You can usually cope pretty quickly. Everything very well signposted.

Meet and Greet is shocking - no one meets you and it costs more and takes longer than using the short stay car park next door. Had to wait 25 mins for my car upon arrival (no meeting or greeting) when I could have paid less and walked an extra 30 seconds by using short stay. The layout looks tired, over stretched and unloved. Passport control is slow and tedious. Signage is confusing. An embarrassing airport for the world to be arriving at.

horrible. we had taken more than 3h of margin to arrive at the airport except that the express train LIVERPOOL was canceled no train and we still do not know why ... so no train ... we had to take a subway then a train for Cambrigde then direction Stansted .... our flight was leaving at 12:30 ... we arrived at 12:15 .... no support ..lamentable staff ... no help and especially no empathy ... a moment of loneliness horrible with 2 children with us ... the only comfort of the travelers who let us go before had ... control ... people who enjoyed our situation ..and who made sure to make the time last ... Result ... we were fortunate to have our flight because of delay but other couples with children remained .... imagine the moral and financial prejudice .... stay in London Stansted 2 days before being able to return ... While it was enough to take care of people in priority ... in short we are disgusted with the situation independent of travelers.

So stanstead airport is going from bad to worse by keeping staff short and having half of passport control lanes closed having hundreds of people queing to show id at border control and somehow it went from 1 star with hundreds of reviews to 2.9 meanwhile my initial review dissapeared ,so how to trust google maps reviews system?? Why ryanair just dosen't move to gatwick

First in Stansted: to start transport from and to the airport to London is quite high (as for other airports). And above all plan to be there 3 hours in advance! There, or usually, no matter the airport in the world, you are told 2 or 3 hours and you will have time to have a coffee and sit quietly, to shop, here it is no joke. I arrived 2 hours before the door closed and I was still waiting to pass security at that time. Fortunately the flight was delayed, otherwise I would have missed it. Besides that after the control, you will have another 10 minutes journey (on foot or by shuttle) to reach your door. A stress caused unnecessarily, a disaster of organization, which is apparently usual. The shopping and restaurant side seemed nice but unfortunately I didn't really have time to go around.

Security queue unacceptable. Spent so long there no time to eat in restaurant or shop. The retailers should ask for a rent reduction! Have not used this airport for years and will not do again.

Long queues. No consideration for passengers not even with children. Considering its an international airport its services should be clearer and much more efficient. Always seems chaotic and short staffed.

I do not even know what you all have the airport is full of good nice staff and if man has to sit on the floor then man comes earlier or takes a pillow to piss with in all honesty

low-cost flight for European country is mainly operate from this International Airport. Well connected Public transport but Parking facility is not upto mark .

This is a medium size internation airport where majority of Jet2 flight operate.

Because you can not put negative stars ... The staff is unpleasant and antipathetic, they are not even informed of what can or can not be carried today, they seized legal belongings for no apparent reason and protest is a waste of time, the only good thing it's the bus system that takes you to the airport ... to relate it to something.

Horrible check-in process and security takes ages. Maybe Stansted should open more then four security gates in the morning hours

Very unfriendly airport staff, very poorly sign posted.

An airport, which is about an hour's drive by train from London.
London Stansted Airport actually
a normal airport many shops.
Especially sweets, alcohol, clothing,
Tabakwaren.Es are there, of course, snacks with coffee and other drinks available.
The loudspeaker announcements are not very good to understand, even if the English
Language is good powerful.

Don t expect to get through this airport quickly - for business travellers, it s a complete waste of time. The car hire drop off feels like miles away from the airport and the transfer bus appears to only come infrequently. To get to the departure gates you have to wind yourself through a massive shopping centre which is clogged with families and holidaymakers. Just not a good experience at all. If you have the choice, drive to LCY and depart from there.

Too many people in a small space. Check some up to their shoes. You should be at the airport earlier so that you do not have a problem with your flight. On the other hand, many duty free shops. Too many people in small space. Check on some up to their shoes. You have to be at the airport hours earlier so you do not have a problem with your flight. On the other hand, many duty-free shops.

Ryan air as usual ruined what could have been a great start to our holiday. Be warned they have changed their T&Cs again.

Worst airport experience of my life.
The best thing about it is departing and never looking back.
Gross, filthy, no seats, humans sleeping on the floor everywhere.

Aeropuerto normal, con precios de vuelos low-cost. Instalaciones correctas.

Quick through security, clean and well signed throughout. Well done Stansted.

Sorry to have to spend the night in this airport. There are no seats, there is no cleaning and you have some security that will take care that you can not sleep.

You have to love Stansted. Sure, it's no Heathrow or Gatwick, and that's what's great about it. You'll be quickly checked in and through security, without very far to go to your gate. Rather than feeling like a huge shopping mall, you can actually get to your flight with relative ease!

The facilities are good and well connected to London city. However, the few problems I have experienced traveling have been at this airport. The machines stopped working or they did it with problems and nobody was responsible or solved the problem, the security staff is a bunch of rude and rude, with exceptions. It is worth it to travel in low-cost companies.

Dirty, chaotic, overloaded, stressful. Terrible place!

Bad airport. Meanwhile, to check the documents as you get off the plane, I could see, in addition to the long line, the racist, rude and unarmed attitude of the inspectors: they made me a head wash absurd for the fact that I had not the passport but the identity card (when I was informed about it, and for the airline with which I was traveling there were no problems), do not try to understand what you say if you do not speak fluent English, on the contrary, they treat you as if you were scum if you do not know it, and then regardless, if you're not English, you do not deserve a special treatment. Let's move on to the controls: I understand that they must be made with meticulousness, but if you have the misfortune of playing the metal detector, get ready because they will treat you like a potential killer. And do not talk then if, always out of favor, they want to open the baggage: they will turn from top to bottom, and attention to liquids because they all want them in a single bag, and you dare not forget even one in the suitcase. To get to the gates it takes from 5 to 10 min, you have to cross an immense commercial center, so watch out if you get close with the times. Few seats for the amount of people running around the airport. I will never stop at this airport again.

It's a disaster, only the good connection to London central is a plus.

No indication of express train arruval to passport control. In addition, people line up to doors that won't open to board. Very bad.

We went through this airport to go to London. The fact that it is far away is not necessarily painful because by inquiring and booking in advance, it is very easy to take the bus.
Where I agree with other opinions is that the staff is not very friendly. And one wonders how, with a rather elaborate system, the controls can take so much time (I speak mostly of the search of the bags if one is unlucky and that one has to make search his luggage cabin).
By cons, aberrant fact: we get on the plane knowing that we will be a little late but we say to ourselves: if it is 10 minutes it is not the sea to drink. We wait, we wait, and there we hear a steward who explains to other passengers that the luggage is not loaded because there is a lack of staff. He announces 40 minutes late and explains that the delay can lengthen because once the luggage loaded, it is still necessary that the pilot has the permissions to take off. Race report: 1h10 late due to a lack of organization and staff. What make us angry and justified!

There is not even staff to take care of checked luggage, it is self-service. Little quality in the attention to the passengers. At least it is easily accessible to central London.

My experience with Stanstead airport has been positive so far after 14 trips.

The airport is fairly new inside but very far from London. The express train that will take you to the city center costs a fortune and you can lose more than an hour to get out of the airport between distant controls and runways. Better to choose other arrivals

Thousands of people waiting, nothing is moving. In last half an hour managed to move just few steps.

Confusing, too few seats in the waiting area, security check is a disaster. Long ways through the never-ending duty free area. Gates are very close. With children, this is pure stress.

Nothing to eat after 8pm although there are flights. Information desk gave me mixed and incorrect information about restaurant closing times. Clogged toilets. Faulty vending machines. Very dissapointing experience overall.

A large airport, but well signposted both outside and inside. Check-in at departures runs smoothly, the arrivals are slightly worse. A long wait for the bus, often travels by local train but the landing terminal itself is so great that a lot of time is marching to reach.

In 10 minutes Then it's only more expensive :)
But the ride is really soooo nice :)

This is a terrible airport - I have been here many times and it is always equally bad. For example, today we got here with plenty of time but the queues were so big that we almost missed our flight. When I asked whether we could skip the queue since our gate was closing in 5 mins, the security lady was extremally rude a defensive saying things like it s not my fault rather than trying to resolve the situation. Even when people allowed us to go through in front of them, she stopped us from doing that. Just terrible - airport is totally not made to accommodate London s needs in terms of dealing with flights and is so badly organised. If I could I would give it zero stars after today.

Don't use buses to get to the city center just because it's cheap, or you'll take a journey that takes longer than your flight time. Airport nice, instructions, service good, staff helpful

A really good airport. The security and accessibility were very good too.

EDIT: Real circuses at the check-in. Anything to make the smooth transition unpleasant. At two airports there was no problem with liquid pouches, at this airport forcing to repack into stun pouches from THIS airport.

After arrival, everything was smooth, no problems. Nice airport employees provide information. Burger king if you want something quick, costa coffe if you want a quick coffee, WHSmith if you want newspapers to read, something sweet or SIMCards. There is also a Charging Point here when your phone runs out of power. Clean toilets, vending machines with masks. You must have a mask in the shops.

Terrible experience in this airport. Delays in check in, security check and ultimately flights. Everyone seems to be dragging their feet and their is no concern towards the clientele.

What a horrible place! Been traveling from here for years now and it just gets worse. There are airports in very busy and poor areas of the world with better facilities. Come on, sorry it out! Only book if it's the only place available.

Queues for about 30 minutes for every toilet in the whole airport every time I've been. Awfully laid out and very cramped.

Staff are not the nicest. Toilets are clean, way too many expensive shops and restaurants no one can afford anyways (I mean we're all flying Ryanair or EasyJet right?). Make sure to download enough films and music before you head to the airport as the wifi is expensive here (9 quid for a day, first hour is free).

The queues for arrivals immigration are terrible. The new approach of self scan passports isn't working here unfortunately. I really hope Stansted sort this out!

No smoking area after security check? You must be joking!! 4hrs + flight duration? Even the tiniest airport has a designated area for us, the poor souls that smoke? In my quest to find a smoking area, I found a prayers room. I vaped in there...

if you want to see a badly organised airport go to Stansted airport

Modern facilities but sometimes accessibility to/from London can be challenging if railway connections are not working properly

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Worst airport ive ever been to in the world!!!! Just not organised at all! Goa airport is better and thats saying something!

Everything went so smoothly, no queuing only when getting on the plane. Staff friendly and helpful. Will fly from this airport again.. thank you.

Great airport with lots to do whilst waiting for your flight.

Very chaotic airport. No seats to wait for boarding. I don't explain why and at Rome airport and Heathrow airport, you check soft. At stansted airport, very strict checks. I would say exaggerated since you are leaving from London. I would have understood better, the most serious checks at the entrance to London .....

Great airport, car parking isn't cheap for a few days. Getting through passport checks was made easier by the machine. Would use it again

i requested assistance my wife who is over 60 had to push me around at the airport,on our return flight landing no assistance was on hand ,i will try not to use stansted again

I expected worse. There is enough to sit and even charge electrical appliances. It has a lot of shops and restaurants.

Six things.

[1] The Stansted Express train is ridiculously expensive.



[3] Signage is substandard in this airport. There's only one large departures display and the smaller ones are few and far between. When I finally got to the right part of the airport, my departure gate (6) was not clearly signed: I had to ask several times which direction to walk in and almost missed my flight in the process. On my return I found no clear sign for the (train) station and, once again, had to ask. Nor was it obvious on entering the airport's main concourse that I would have to walk several hundred metres to the left in order to find my way to departures.

[4] On returning to STN I had to zig-zag 6 times to reach the row of electronic passport readers, 3 zig-zags would've been plenty for the amount of passengers wanting to get through passport control. Hire someone to adjust the number of zig-zags: I don't visit airports for exercise purposes.

[5] Since departure gates are assigned rather late in the day (or at least they don't appear on the few displays until quite late), the general departures space is seriously underdimensioned. I'm over 70 and do appreciate a place to sit while I wait, preferably in a place where I can see a legible departures display.

[6] Having to meander through perfume, tobacco, jewelry and designer clothes outlets in order to get to a departure gate is a silly waste of a passenger's time and an insult to his/her intelligence. But that critique can unfortunately be levelled at most airports these days.

One of my least favourite airports. Getting through security takes a very long time, and the waiting area is extremely crowded and a bit labyrinthian.

+ Free WiFi.
+ Trains to-and-from are located directly within the airport.

- Always crowded, always slow. Both security and passport control.
- Long queues at restroom facilities.
- When your gate is announced on the screens there is a good chance you'll have to end up walking for 10 minutes to get there.

It has taken me 15 mins to explain to the staff at the burger king what a cheese burger and a 7up is.

Very good and much stores & restaurants at the waiting are. WiFi didn't work for me. Everything else was as expected

Good airport, lugage arrive quickly, clean. They process your documents quickly as well. Good coffee shops and other nice places.

Saddled on the floor for many hours and froze with hundreds of passengers if one were lucky and fall asleep, they immediately woke up with securities. There was no heat on and no side was placed. This is the last More

Worst airport to collect anyone from. Ridiculous parking charges. I don't want to go anywhere near this airport again.

Stansted is well connected to not only central London but also other cities and areas. But with that said, let's start the roasting...

Arriving and passing through the passport control takes forever, they simply do not man enough counters. A lot of people keep whining about Luton Airport but arriving at Luton is a h*** of a lot faster than Stansted.

And again, when leaving. Caught in a not-too-long que for the security but thanks to the incompetent, arrogant buffoons working there we almost missed our flight.

How do they handle people who clearly hasn't packed their liquids correctly:
A. Treat these people like little darlings and let everyone else wait meanwhile.
B. Yell at everyone else and tell them they are delaying the security check.

Answer: A and B.

What do you when scanning machine breaks down?
A. Nothing, just stand there for 20 minutes.
B. Yell at everyone and tell them they are delaying the security check.

Answer: A and B

OK, I could go on and on like that but I think you all get the Point. Stansted Airport ist most likely managed by potheads or similar. I challenge the management of Stansted Airport: any random corpse would do a far better job than you do!

London is very busy, so make sure you book your bus and arrive two hours before your flight departs, so you have to get on the bus five hours before your flight, so you don't have to worry about missing a flight.
If you make a reservation with Easy Bus and print it, you can ride one or two hours early or late.
I am happy that I can fly cheaply as a student.

Impeccably clean. Friendly staff. Good variety of stores. The terminal itself was really very good. HOWEVER, THE PARKING CHARGES ARE DAYLIGHT ROBBERY. Shame on yourselves at MAG Stansted. Your orange car park was overcrowded, the signage appalling and the one way system in your Orange car park was truly abysmal. The parking rates are unnecessarily punitive. You're greedy with your rates and I truly hope more people complain. You're opportunistic rates are unjust and should be lowered considerably. Boo hiss boo.

This is a photo of one of the bus stops inside the mid-stay carpark. You get one hour free parking in the mid-stay carpark. Don't go to the dropoff area at the terminal building because you will have to pay on exit and it's not cheap. Disgraceful exploitation! Don't go to long stay or short stay. If I'm picking someone up I wait outside the mid stay until the person calls me from inside the terminal. Then I wait near the bus stop in an available zone, having sent them the bus stop number.

We moved here, so we spent about 5 hours here. Because of the queues to get out and then to get in again (the other one was, despite much more people, much faster), it's quite a run away. The substantial minus is for a few toilets (or worse marked, I've been looking for them for a while).

There is no room for the number of the passangers. Everything is full, not a chance in any restaurant or waiting area to sit down. Our fly was delayed and the airport did not provide any info. I have found the info about the delay on Google and we were kept in the gate for two hours with not enough chairs to sit down.

Travelling during the current pandemic has been made rather easy at Stansted. Both airport and easyJet staff have been great.

I am disabled man I quite often travel from this airport. Help for disabled passengers is OK except one Indian orgin man, who is sometimes rude and not clever at his work.

Poor signage to terminal of gas station, slow security control with unnecessary announcements in all languages, many control tapes not in operation, the forced passage through the duty-free in a zig-zag line is an imposition and unnecessarily extended the way to the gates. I want to be harassed to my flyers and not by perfumers. On arrival, the passport control is also no joy, about one third of the machines for the automatic passport control are out of service.

It is full and noisy, but you can find your way around or you can always find someone who can give you information. Even the trips to London are well organized despite the apparent chaos.

The worse airport in UK. Saw lots of people missing their flights because of the security check system was so poor.
The airport clearly cannot handle the amount of people and there are no priority lane for family at the security check. We saw an elderly was crying because she the gate is about to close And the staff won t let her go through first.

Comparing to Gatwick and Heathrow, standsed is the worse airport, staff were so unhelpful.

Horrific airport which lacks basic facilities and smells awful, like sewage. Full of awful airlines such as Ryanair and the accompanying crowd, only to be used for absolute bargain flights. Only saving grace is a decent departures lounge.

It's very far to london. The fastest way to London center is by rail express.