Your most hated “ski” airport?

A snowHead

@Sack the Juggler,

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Geneva and Grenoble - terrible affairs.

I drive now.

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The other thing I dont understand is why on gods earth you want to board first with kids. I want him doing laps of the departure lounge for as long as possible before getting on that plane and plugging him into an ipad for 8 hours.

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Not reading through all 3 pages of this but for me it's easy. Venice Treviso. Horrendous place. The oversized baggage for your skis is not manned full time, the security is slow, the rental car drop off is a mile away, there are zero facilities. One of the worst places I have been to.

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Any UK airport having just picked up some now very very heavy skis and start heading through "nothing to declare".....then you know it's over.... Neutral

After all it is free

Crikey this thread has bought all the bad memories back and re-affirmed why I prefer to drive....although the stresses of the tunnel these days are removing some of that pleasure!

I am now already regretting the decision to book the cheap EJ flights for the last blast week with the kids on 8th April from LTN to GVA and throwing the horrors of taking my own skis and hiring a car into the mix.

To answer the initial question, Grenoble for me.

To those criticizing Innsbruck, I can only assume you've never been diverted from there to Friedrichshafen! It's like Innsbruck but staffed by just 3 people and a sleeping dog. Almost 2hrs between getting off the plane and picking up luggage.

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@Mjit, Ended up in Friedrichshafen at half term with 3 cases missing - they eventually arrived at 02.30.

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I have to give a shout out to Geneva this year (I know!).

Out on Wed 14th, no queue for passport control. Bags were on the belt as soon as we got there, skis arrived as soon as we went to the oversized belt. Taxi driver was caught a bit short!
Bit of a nightmare with easyJet bag drop on the way back on 26th - will post about that separately. Otherwise straight through priority security (regular security looked to be moving pretty quickly). Couple of minutes for passport control.

It show that they can do it (and that avoiding Saturday is the way to go!)

@zikomo, it was fine even on Saturday for me.

You know it makes sense.

GVA yesterday 25th Feb. Arrived just after 14:00 with hand baggage only. Queue for security not as bad as I have seen it but fairly long, however all desks open and through in around 20 mins. Queue for passport control less than 5 mins.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

GVA for me... Detest the place... overcrowded, sh*t facilities and security is carnage...

A snowHead

'@hawkwind,

We pay £74 with Easyjet to take 1 ski bag containing 2 pairs of skis.
If you can let me know where we can hire top of the range kit for £37 in the 3 Valleys that would be great!

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

As Matt1959 said GVA did well yesterday. Gate D81 is near Annecy,but put me in the mood for the 20 mins wait to get back into UK at dismal Birmingham.

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Sorry, just have to quote the late, great Douglas Adams ...

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression "as pretty as an airport". Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (...) and the architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.

They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve jangling colours, to make effortless the business of separating the traveller from his or her luggage or loved ones, to confuse the traveller with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of the Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumably on the grounds that they are not.”

Or, to paraphrase, they’re all horrible - but the price you pay to go skiing !

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I had an horrendous time at Chamberry last year but this year not too bad.

However my biggest rant is Luton. If someone is reading this thats involved in the planning, building or anything with the car parks at Luton airport....then when you die i hope you go straight to hell! I would say a lot more but i dont want to risk getting banned from the forum about your existance on this planet.

I've been to this airport about 30 times in 5 years. How long is the building work going on for? Its like it started in 2002 and will be finished in 2080. The car parks are a mess. The cost even just picking someone up is ridiculous. The directions are a joke.

I remember taking a wrong turning and it cost just to drive through the drop off area to go and find the short stay car park. Last month i missed the turning for the long stary car park. I followed the signs for exit and i came to a barier that needed £8 to let me out.

Im going to stop there before i continue as it will turn into a thesis.

As for best airport...well the list is endless. Im an RAF guy. So i dont need a check in or passport at times when i fly away most times Toofy Grin

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Turin is the worst I have been through. No luggage carts on arrival then off the transfer bus and directly onto the back of the check in queues stretching outside the terminal on the way back. I would avoid this at all costs.

After all it is free

Grenoble on a Saturday morning, what a shambles!!

As others have said, the airport cannot cope with all the flights arriving and departing in a short space of time, it was mayhem a couple of Saturdays ago returning to the UK (truck had broken down, and insurance flew us back).

Even after the stress of a breakdown, it is still my preference to drive, and even more so after witnessing Grenoble. Geneva a couple of years ago wasn't much better, and that was a Wednesday flight in mid-March!!

Turin. They made Chambery look efficient.

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Anyone fly back in MAN T1 yesterday? we landed just after 14.00, though passport check OK, screens said bags on carousel 4, however our flight and all others were mixed up, and came out on totally different carousels than were shown on screen. Global Baggage Solutions staff were seen walking about in their hi visa vests initially, then as they realised that there were problems, they all took them off and held them in their hands so avoid being questioned, out bags eventually came out an hour after landing, due to a "staff shortage" message on the tannoy, hmmm seem to get that message every trip, AFIK flights are a scheduled thing, surely they can rosta enough staff to cope with the workload.
I'm not on twitter, and can't find anyway of contacting anyone senior at the airport via Facebook as social media seems to get a response now. Anyone provide any assistance?

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Turin is definately getting bad again. Pre Olympics we knew we'd have to take a seat for a couple of hours awaiting our luggage & skis on arrival. Post it seemed to get better but was awful in January. Kept changing the carousel number for both luggage & skis & it became a comedy cartoon with everyone running up & down the baggage area. Add to that a huge queue to get through passport control on arrival - a good 40 minute wait.

Return was as bad as ever, huge queues for the ski drop off then the inevitable 45 min wait to get through the scanners. No where to sit once through so we ended up on the floor, very dignified.

Can't wait to hit the charter terminal at Geneva in two weeks time ................ Sad

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Geneva wasn’t much fun last Saturday. But then It was half term....

Chaos in the car hire drop off car park
Bus for 50yards to get into terminal
90 mins in easyJet bag drop area
Queues at security
Nothing decent to buy to eat airside except a 10 quid ham and cheese panini (we’ve got young kids so the champagne and shellfish bar didn’t cut it for them!)
and then passport control at the end of a long walk as chaos

Took about 4 hours from entering the car park to getting on the plane

Mind you, if I’d wanted a hublot watch or a fancy pen there were plenty of very nice shops that would have sold me one of those

Stansted provides a pretty hideous experience all round really.
Security is virtually always a nightmare hence they offer a 'fast track' for no less than £7! This fast track takes you on a route, slightly longer than it needs to be (or indeed used to be when it cost £3.50) but clearly specially devised to give you as good a view as possible of all the poor folk suffering 'normal service', and them of you exercising your queue jumping privilege! Of course, none of this is accidental as, not being able to predict how long the security pantomime will take means having to allow extra time, which inevitably results in people spending longer in the hellish 'retail zone'.
The path from security winds back and forth in an overtly cynical attempt to lengthen your passage through the alcohol and perfume shops. These overpriced and asphyxiating hangovers from the days of duty free are an anachronism given virtually all of Stansted's passenger traffic is within the EU.
We then pass into the food court. Virtually all seating here is now allocated to commercial operators. They are crammed into every available space and all but the stupidly expensive are PACKED! There are people on the floors and this is just a normal morning: what must it be like if there are flight delays?
And so it goes... I could go on, and write as much again, all in a similar vein.
Suffice to say: this was truly a 1star experience but for the guy, on our return, directing the disembarked passengers in song! Then just as we passed him he muttered "shoot me someone, please!"
This moment of humour, within an experience otherwise entirely devoid of joy, is imho worthy of an extra star!

You know it makes sense.

@geoffknight, similar experience in T3 reclaim last weekend (18th). Bags coming out as we got down to carousel, then no more, sign says reclaim finished, everyone starts complaining and then the rest come out 20 minutes later. Always the same at Manchester. They seem to be targeted on first bag out in my view. As with you no one to take responsibility for it on the floor. Evil or Very Mad

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A snowHead

A snowHead

We all have a choice as to the airports that we use and it is the price we pay to go skiing...

Most of the airports mentioned, certainly the UK ones, are served by no frills carriers. This means that you get what you pay for...if you want no queues at security then this means the airport employing more staff and using more equipment with these extra costs being passed onto the carriers and therefore the passengers.

Same with seating...they can provide seating areas or lease out that space to earn revenue which keeps prices low.

The "worst" ski airport I've been to was Kittila, simply because it was small (but charming) so with limited facilities. The worst airport I've ever been to was Dhaka...a horrible experience. It never snows there...which is a shame as it would have covered up the mess.

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Since it hasn't appeared here I assume that Sophia airport has improved a lot since I used it regularly (25+ years ago). Airside it has one small bar with half a dozen seats and that was it. There were no other seats airside. You stood.

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Geneva, it took longer to get my skis in the airport that it did for the flight from Edinburgh...

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Every time I've flown to GVA with skis, they have appeared at the oversize baggage collection point literally as I walked in to the baggage hall.
Remember, I'm flying from within Schengen zone too, so haven't had the passport control delay, making it appear even faster still compared to a UK traveller.

Manchester and Schiphol are the ones where bags take longer than the flight to arrive.
Schiphol, CDG, Orly and Cayenne - useless for skiing, but when we fly that route there's a sweepstake as to who will arrive with no bags. Mine arrived 11am on a Thursday, after the flight arrived 5pm on the Saturday.

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Addis Abbaba, never any bloody snow

After all it is free

Grenoble - the place is CHAOS

@MogulMonkey, .

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@Frank Spencer,

Help!!

Your most hated “ski” airport?

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