There are few places on this Earth more stressful than an airport. Whether it’s fear of losing your luggage or having to navigate huge crowds, ridiculously long delays or the impact of strikes, there are plenty of things to get in a right tizzy over before catching a flight.
Airports are the perfect setting for family fall outs and couple tiffs. But according to research Preply, an online English lessons platform, some UK airports are much more stress-inducing than others.
Preply analysed 20 of the biggest airports in the country, taking into account the number of ‘stressful’ reviews on Google, lost luggage queries, parking costs, punctuality and the number of passengers passing through each airport. After all that, it gave each port an overall ‘stress score’.
The airport most likely to send your blood pressure skyrocketing is... Manchester Airport. With its combination of a 25-minute average delay time, over 9,000 lost luggage queries and more than 96,000 people passing through it each day in peak season, the northern aviation hub received an overall ‘stress score’ of 6.56.
London Luton landed in second place thanks to 1,250 lost luggage searches, a 27-minute average delay and 53,000 passengers in peak season. It scored a total of 5.48 for stressfulness.
Then, Bristol Airport was given a ‘stress score’ of 5.45 for a 25-minute average delay time, 1,370 lost luggage queries and crowds of almost 35,000 each day during peak season.
On the flipside, the least stressful port in apparently Liverpool John Lennon Airport, which boasts zero Google queries for lost luggage over the past year.
The top 10 most stressful UK airports in the UK, according to Preply
- Manchester
- London Luton
- Bristol
- London Heathrow
- Birmingham
- London Stansted
- Edinburgh
- Bournemouth
- London Gatwick
- Leeds Bradford
So, if you’ve got flights planned from any of those hubs, make sure to factor in time for a quick pre-flight pint to recover from the stress.
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