Airport Reviews

Worst airport in the UK: Southampton?

Well, aren't we getting spoiled?  So many UK airports now have some minimal level of homogenised quality to their chain restaurants, that Southampton was a terrible shock last week.  The departure lounge is really tiny, but it does include a wireless hotspot.  If only I hadn't been repeatedly thrown off the wireless network: not sure why, was it my laptop or their system?  I was trying to distract myself from starvation because the food in the departure lounge was a motorway-service-station style affair.  Old pastries, probably nothing but wheat and minimal glutinous filling, pizza with minimal food covering, in a warming-cabinet- euuchh.  Icky sandwiches.  A long line: I couldn't bear it in the end, having been up at 5am that morning.  The sad thing is, it seems like most flights out of Southampton are FlyBe which is a budget airline that doesn't serve food (paid £210 for the ticket by the way- late booking for emergency meeting).  You can buy food on board if you have the right change: it's really nasty boring sandwiches and hot chocolate made with packet mix.  I was so hungry by the time I landed in Glasgow I actually ate in the Glasgow Airport restaurant: that's a first for me.  I knew I'd be too tired when I got home to cook, and there was no food in the house anyway.  It would've been 9pm.

Bristol: slight improvement

I'm pleased to say that a recent trip to Bristol Airport showed some improvement.  It used to be you could get a dried up muffin or sandwich in one bit of the departure lounge, and some horrible "pub food" type thing from the bar- if they were serving it.  But now the sandwich bit has a lovely selection of fresh salads, nice sandwiches, juices, cakes and so on.

Just as an aside, the entire staff there appear to be Polish.  Not a plus or a minus, just an observation.