East Midlands Airport Arvostelua 

Rapid drop off. Appalling treatment of customers. Removed barriers so you can’t pay on way out. Family member has been fined twice now, forgetting to pay online when he got home. Only have 24 hr window then 100 pound fine . Really needs looking at by trading standards as it seems like robbery

Well... we used to love east midlands Airport and travelled regularly as our nearest airport. Nice and small and quick security, a bite to eat at Frankie & Benny,s and a nice start to the holidays. On the return a reliably quick passport control and home in no time - Happy days ... Due to flight times we started using Manchester which is about 30 mins further to travel... So with flight times that suited this week we looked forward to returning to our local. What happened in the last 2 years ???? Unrecognisable experience. Cleared security at 6.30pm to find no frankie and bennys & all eateries but castle (who's food is totally disgusting & overpriced we found previous) were already closed .. at 6.30 - even burger king ??? Thankfully we just managed to get last orders at the new Italian (service and food were very good - so a nice surprise) The return .... a late flight (12.10am landing) and for once Ryan Air were on time and the flight was great. Until.... we land to be told we cannot disembark for 10 minutes because another plane had landed at the same time - what kind of airport cant handle 2 planes landing at the same time? We were on the very back row as keen to get home for work the next day... once we could disembark the rear passengers were stopped on the steps and not allowed to board the bus. Apparently because "people had to be let off the front of the plan first to keep the plan balanced "?? What ??? Then passport control what an absolute farce !! Huge queue for the passport machines. We eventually were 6th from the front and got ushered into another queue by staff who acted like we'd won a prize... we had - another 20 minutes queue for a manned passport control. Another passenger in the queue was complaining (quite loudly) and the border control staff started arguing back ... once we got to the front of the queue finally and moaned that we'd been waiting way too long the border control officer told us we had on fact been waiting no longer than 20 minutes. I explained we had been waiting a lot longer than that and instead of empathy for the delay in the early hours he just argued... I informed him we landed at 12.10 and its now 1am. So Im sorry to say we will not be in a rush to fly from EMA again. Last time I flew into Manchester I was off the plane and out of the airport in 10 minutes! So still home quicker despite the extra miles. I cant see how EMA will stay in business if this terrible customer experience is left to continue... very sad and disappointed in what its become .

Amazing experience! Check in (jet2) was simple and easy! Security was quick and simple
(Even with a 3 year old that was traumatised at Birmingham!) and the loading process was quick and efficient.

Meet & Greet parking at East Midlands Airport wasn’t the experience I was expecting. I collected my car Thursday afternoon on returning from holiday, unfortunately I didn’t do my walk around checks before I left, bad mistake. On returning home I discovered front near side bumper damage to my car. I have since requested the CCTV footage that was taken of my car when I arrived for my holiday via email but it bounced back and requested I use a different email address that also didn’t work, tried contacting them by phone and that’s IMPOSSIBLE be very careful when using Meet & Greet parking I won’t be using it again.

Disgusting airport ripping everyone off. Dropped off daughter, took details to pay charge, tried but had Wifi problems at home, tried again Saturday same problems, tried Sunday Wifi ok but would not let me pay, will probably get a £60 fine, this is just wrong its like the parking scandal in Derby last year.

A change of circumstances ment I had to cancel my parking before the 72 hour cut of but because of a technical issue it wouldn't recognise my booking reference.and as it fell on a weekend it was a bot only service no customer service agents so lost my parking costs.
Been using direct parking for years but possible no more as no customer service and a quick look shows similar issues by others .beware

Rapid drop off designed to catch you out

Departure from EMA was OK accept the £5 charge to drop off passengers. `Arriving back was a different matter. Three planes landing within a few minutes of each other in the early hours. Not enough transport for the passengers to disembark without having to wait for each aircraft to unload its passengers and wait for the airport bus to return from the terminal. The arrivals hall is dismal and dirty, long lines and too few staff and boarder control machines for the number of arrivals. Lets the whole airport down.

I've used East Midlands Airport for years and have always spoken positively about it, but my recent experience with the drop-off parking system has completely changed my opinion.

I picked someone up on 29/04/2026 and, like many people, simply forgot to pay the £5 drop-off fee. The airport has now moved to an online-only payment system, meaning you drive away, deal with the busy pickup, load luggage into the car, face a long drive home, and then, in my case, arrive late at night and go straight to bed. It's very easy to forget.

Some will say, "The signs are there." That's true. But let's be realistic. This system appears designed to maximise revenue from genuine mistakes rather than encourage compliance. A £5 charge should not be turning into what follows.

The most frustrating part is that I actually contacted the parking company myself to try and pay the fee after realising I'd forgotten. I was told I could not simply pay the £5 and instead had to wait for a Parking Charge Notice to arrive in the post.

So I waited.

The parking event was on 29/04/2026. Today, 15/06/2026, 47 days later, the first letter I have received is not a Parking Charge Notice at all, but a "Final Payment" letter demanding £170. The letter states: "You may not have responded to previous letters due to an oversight."

What oversight?

We never received any previous letters. In fact, I've been waiting for them to arrive so I could resolve the matter and pay what I thought might have been a reduced early payment fee. To suggest that I ignored correspondence when this is the first letter I've seen is both inaccurate and insulting.

When I challenged this on the phone with Debt Recovery Plus, I was told to contact Royal Mail. Frankly, that feels like a complete fob-off. We receive post every day without issue and never have had an instance of 'lost in the post'. The parking company claims it has proof that letters were sent, but where is the proof that they were actually delivered? If these demands are so important, why are they not sent by recorded delivery? There appears to be no way for a customer to prove a letter never arrived, while the company simply relies on a system-generated record saying one was produced and supposedly sent.

The result? A forgotten £5 payment becomes a £170 demand - 34 times the original charge!!!

How can a charge of £170 possibly be justified for a drop-off parking fee that I actively tried to pay? That's not a deterrent; it feels like a revenue-generating exercise that relies on people making honest mistakes and then becoming trapped in a process they cannot challenge effectively.

This is the first parking charge I've received in over 20 years of driving. I've now paid it, but I do so as a disgusted and deeply unhappy customer. East Midlands Airport has lost a great deal of goodwill from me over this experience.

A complete joke. 0/5.

Landed late which didn’t help
Then a bus to passport control which was around 300m
3 aircraft on at once
Guy on passport control shouting to get you forward yet no one there helping people stuck at the e gates
Then used M&G which we’ve done dozens of times and had a fine due to their new system
We were 1.5 hours late due to the bus and passport control queues
So after getting fined from the rapid drop off last year and now the new meet and greet system Ema will be out last choice from now on

This is the absolute WORST airport I have ever been in. Everything closes so early, they time your wifi and then make you PAY. THERES ALSO NO SERVICE. I had a flight that was gonna get me home at 1am delayed by 3 hours. No shops or restaurants open for food. Lounge closed. No one telling us anything. No charging ports outside of CLOSED RESTAURANTS. Do NOT fly out of here, just go to Birmingham. Would give it negative stars if i could. It should be shut down.

Our Audi Q5 was only taken 2.35 miles each way to their parking lot for 18 days but what a mess it was in on our return! We are quite methodical in how and where we keep things but what did we encounter on our return?

1) Half pack of Jakemans Lozenges emptied (bar one!) and blatantly left open by the gear shift!
2) Glovebox and 2 other storage compartments rummaged through and left as though they'd been burgled!
3) All heating and ventilation controls messed about with!
4) Radio pre-sets all changed, and left on Radio 3 which we never listen to!
5) Electrically adjustable seat moved to an impossible driving position, and lumbar support completely altered!
6) Drive-mode changed from 'Comfort' to 'Dynamic' so I dread to think how it was driven, and with a cold engine?

I don't know how EMA vet these cretins who have zero respect for our cars, but I think Uber is the next step for us, and our car can remain untouched by their grubby thieving & tampering hands, safe inside our garage!

Overall, the M & G system is a pretty good model at EMA and is now complemented by an umpteen thousand £ automated check-in and check-out of keys (and still plenty of staff, doing what!?), but where have the numbered parking bays gone when you go to collect your car? They have been replaced with coloured zones so you can have the pleasure of wandering around dozens of scattered cars to find yours, a delight when there's heavy rain about, just like the infamous boarding and disembarking of planes at the airport with no airbridges for protection from the elements!

P.S. I have given 2 generous stars to EMA only due to its location and available flights......

Extremely rude security who wasn’t even the member of staff serving me while waiting for bag, he began talking to me very rudely with a smile on his face. It was 4 in the morning. He then continued to laugh and smile at me while picking out things about my appearance in front of a large number of people while checking their bags, I finally got away when my bag had been checked but this experience ruined my day and was extremely rude and unprofessional

It would be a good, convenient, clear laid out airport. Unfortunately the no ticket barrier and tight payment details mean you can easily end up with a £100 parking fine. An extortionate amount for the action. Disappointing about the blatant daylight robbery! Especially for people in a cost of living crisis. Shocking.

The rapid drop of charge is a complete Con. Its difficult to find out how to pay, signs are difficult to see. This is just a money grab by the airport.. WHAT A RIP OFF

I regularly travel from East Midlands Airport and have to use the assisted travel.
I want to say a massive thank you for the assistance provided last January by LUKE DOVE and last night by CHLOE.
They both were polite , kInd, thoughtful and above all very helpful.
They were a credit to the airport.
Thank you LUKE and CHLOE

Terrible organisation... 3 planes landing at 1am... they have all day, why not organise them 30mins apart. Queues through passport control takes forever due to every plane arriving at once. Absolute joke. Who ever is in charge of organising things needs retraining. They ard doing a terrible job

BOOTS closed at the airport Inside and outside. It is showing click and collect but this is not the case. No information on the website informing passengers of other facilities that could accommodate these needs. Was informed by a very unhelpful individual that contact BOOTS they shouldn’t have gone!! Unbelievable bad customer service. No more flying from EMA

I booked my car park and normally don’t have any issue with it. One part is my fault and hold my hands up to it. I booked us back on the wrong date coming back. I emailed them on support emaparking.co.uk (can’t put full emails)had no response, I sent it 5days before my holiday. So I emailed another email GeneralEnquiries.MAGParking apcoa.com, I got auto response but again never heard anything. So I had to call them and that was hard getting someone to speak too. They charged me £30 for one day. But when I got to the barrier it didn’t open so press button to speak to someone and it said on the screen £20. So they over charged me when I range up. Even who I spoke to at the barrier said I paid over the amount. Not good as I been stressing and worrying all holiday.

Drop off is a rip off price, red no parking lines everywhere to rip you off even more if you have to stop for any reason. Departures fine no issues, security no real issues but when we flew out the x-ray machines seemed to be on the blink as more people had bag checks than I have ever seen before, airside duty free is totally over priced £3 nearly for a small bottle of water, sweets,crisps for the kids you need a mortgage for, flying out fine, return no real issues with security and passport control but then the baggage collection, area is fine but the toilets were absolutely disgusting, the worst I have ever seen at any airport anywhere, toilet paper all over the cubicle floors and urine on all the toilet seats and floor, a total disgrace when you have sat on a plane for five hours, the ladies from what my wife said where not much better, they obviously want your cash on the way out but do not care when you get back. So overall a rip off going and totally neglected when you get back