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22/02/2007 - Airport Quality

With the requirement nowadays to check-in for flights way in advance of their scheduled time of departure, the importance of decent facilities for passengers at airport lounges throughout Europe cannot be underestimated.

Having arrived in good time, the invariably long wait is made bearable by plentiful seating areas (coupled with decent quality seats), varied shopping facilities and reasonably priced eateries. The best examples we've found on recent travels include Zurich Airport which, in addition to ticking all of the above boxes, features light and airy terminal buildings with floor to ceiling windows, first-rate shower and babysitting facilities, attractively laid-out stores (including those selling grocery items) and a wide-range of rest areas bathed in natural light. And, with it being operated with typical Swiss efficiency, it serves as one of Europe's most pleasant transit airports. Munich Airport is similarly impressive, with stunning architecture, spotlessly clean facilities, a good selection of shops (including quality food to go) and an efficient S-Bahn service into the city centre.

However, if you happen to travel back from Switzerland or Munich to either Heathrow or, to a lesser degree Gatwick Airport, you'll wonder where all the revenue that BAA has made over the years is being spent. Certainly the baggage reclaim area at Gatwick seems to be in a permanent state of reconstruction, while facilities at Heathrow terminal 3 in particular, seem outdated and overstretched (with well-documented cases of luggage belts breaking down and excessively large queues in reclaim areas).

What's more worrying, however, is the fact that we've witnessed (on several occasions) security staff in departures being distracted with personal conversations, to the point where screening staff operating X-ray machines have paid little, or no attention to the hand-luggage being put before them.

Faced then, with the choice of decent facilities or decent security we'd opt for the latter. But when long check-in times, poor facilities and poor security all combine to provide a miserable and worrying start to a trip, then travellers will turn increasingly to other forms of transport, including fast and frequent train services. Time then, for the operators of airports which fall short, to look at Zurich and Munich as examples of how it should be done.

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