London Luton: Passenger Reviews, Q&A, and Travel Advice

[BOZPH]

Luton airport has lost its way.
It is expensive to use . Parking for drop off/pick up is the most expensive in England. Trolleys are charged for when passengers are expected to walk 200m uphill with luggage. Disabled passengers are penalised. A £3.80 charge is made to park in the Short term parking (which is further away than the able bodied drop off). Car park staff have no idea of customer service and cause congestion through lack of training.
Book customer assistance and you will wait in the cold and rain (although prebooked) until "someone" is available.
In the terminal,
Check in desks are left unmanned whilst long queues develope at those open . This is caused by two flights checking at one desk. Security, well pay for the priority, because the normal "free" security is undermanned to help generate this extra revenue stream.
Whenever possible I use Heathrow, for short haul destinations BA or other european flag carriers offer competive fares . Free dropoff , disabled to the terminal door, free trolleys and cheaper parking for meet and greet . Free checked baggage.
Heathrow wins every time. Passenger throughput Luton 9M=chaos, Heathrow 70m=Good efficient customer service.

 

[Aviador]

Welcome to Forums4airports BOZPH

Comparing Luton airport with Heathrow airport is like comparing a Mini with a Mercedes.

The majority of flights at Luton are operated by low-cost airlines where as Heathrow flights are nearly all operated by full service airlines. Heathrow airport will make far more money because of the increased landing charges. Luton will need to offer significantly lower landing charges to entice airlines to use the airport and the airport will inevitably need to look at other ways of increasing revenues to pay for things such as expansion and renewal.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

A lot of regional airports (I accept that LTN is a London airport but it largely operates like many regionals) are criticised for making ancillary charges such as for car dropping off/picking up passengers, fast track security, luggage trolleys and intrusive retail outlets that impinge on much-needed passenger space in terminals.

But as Aviador points out most of the smaller airports (when compared with the likes of LHR, LGW and MAN) have to go out to battle for airline partners to service their airports in the face of competition from elsewhere. Often, the only way they can succeed is to offer enticing deals to the airline to use their airport.

This means they have to find revenue streams from elsewhere and possibly at times cut corners in their service provision to passengers to try to reduce costs which can lead to such things as queues at security because of insufficient numbers of staff. In my experience LTN is not alone in this.