The UK’s smaller airports appear to be winning over customers when it comes to passenger experience, according to a survey by consumer group Which?
Exeter topped the list, followed by Liverpool and London City. Next were Bournemouth, Newcastle, Norwich, Inverness and Cardiff, with Southampton and Belfast City rounding out the top 10.
Manchester Airport failed to impress, with three of its terminals ranking in the bottom four, alongside London Luton. It is the fourth consecutive year that Manchester’s Terminal 3 came bottom.
Heathrow Terminal 5 was the highest-placed of the major airports, at 13, with Gatwick North at 19.
Which? surveyed about 6,000 passengers about their airport experiences over the previous 12 months. Respondents rated airports across 10 categories, including customer service, wait times for baggage, security queues, availability of seating and the range of shops and food outlets.
Manchester Airport Terminal 3 received just one star for security queues, seating, prices in shops and food outlets as well as the range and quality of shops and food eateries. One passenger told Which?: “Now Ryanair puts most of its flights through there and it is absolutely not set up for that number of passengers. It’s impossible to get a drink or something to eat, but much worse than that – there is nowhere to sit.”
Manchester Terminal 1 (47 per cent), which is scheduled for closure this year, was the second lowest-scoring terminal. One passenger said: “The cleanliness in Terminal 1 is appalling. Toilets are often overflowing, and there's rubbish everywhere.”
London’s lowest-scoring airport was Luton, with a score of 51 per cent. The airport received one star for seating and prices in shops and eateries, while most other categories only managed two stars. Luton did achieve three stars for baggage queues. Passengers may see improvements in the coming years, as the government has now approved a £2.4 billion ($3.2 billion) expansion.
Other London airports including Heathrow T2 (57 per cent), T3 (54 per cent), T4 (55 per cent), T5 (59 per cent), Stansted (53 per cent) and London Gatwick North (57 per cent) and London Gatwick South (55 per cent) all shared common issues such as poor customer service and lack of seating. All London airports, except London City, scored just one star for prices in shops and food outlets.
At the top end, Exeter Airport, which serves about 500,000 passengers a year (compared to 29 million at Manchester or 84 million at Heathrow), received a customer score of 80 per cent.
Travellers awarded Exeter five stars for customer service, check in, toilets, bag drop and security queues. However, the small airport only received three stars for its range of shops and eateries. One traveller told Which? “Exeter offers a relaxed and stress-free travel experience, a welcome change from larger airports.”
Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel said: “While some airports show that the few hours before your flight can be an enjoyable start to a holiday, others are an endurance test as passengers feel more like cattle herded from expensive shops to overpriced bars and restaurants, as well as dealing with long queues and dirty toilets.
“Next time you’re booking a flight, it’s well worth considering not just your choice of airline but also your airport – it could make all the difference to the start of your getaway and maybe even get that holiday feeling started a little sooner.”
Manchester Airport managing director Chris Woodroofe said Manchester was serving more passengers than ever before, connecting 31 million people a year to more than 200 destinations
“Through our historic £1.3 billion transformation programme, we have created a world-class and award-winning Terminal 2. We have also announced plans to invest significantly in Terminal 3 – starting this year.
“I am also proud to say customer satisfaction has increased significantly over the past four years. We know how customers feel about their experience because we asked hundreds of them every week about it. Between January and June this year, 91 per cent of 3,045 people surveyed told us their experience was good, very good or excellent.
“That is how I know this latest outdated and unrepresentative report from Which? bears no resemblance to the experience people receive at Manchester Airport day in, day out.”
A London Heathrow representative said Which? relied on “unrepresentatively small sample sizes and recollections to assess an industry that already collects vast amounts of data on a daily basis, all verified and published by an independent regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority”.
A London Luton Airport representative said a sample size of just 255 Which? readers who used the airport “is simply not representative of the 16.7 million passengers who travelled with us in 2024”.
