Munich Airport Reviews 

Flying to Dublin after a Coldplay concert in Munich, we departed from Munich International Airport. The security staff were inefficient, incompetent and intentionally indifferent.

We were going through security check 9 in Terminal 2, at approx. 2pm. The queue moved painfully slowly; we eventually realised why. To begin with, the two staff members had no organised system for screening the bags. Then on top of that, when they decided a bag needed to be opened, they stopped the full conveyor belt, rather than one taking the bag to the side and the other continuing with the x-ray screening.

The couple next to us were very close to missing their flight. They were waiting for their bag to come through the x-ray next when the staff asked for another bag to be opened, stopping all other luggage from being screened. The couple explained their situation and politely asked if the other security staff member could check their bags. The response: the lady checking the opened bag pulled a face, shrugged her shoulders (twice!) and pulled the opened bag back closer to the x-ray machine to ensure she blocked all luggage from being screened by her colleague.

I’ve travelled through airports all over the world; this was the worst encounter I’ve ever had with security. Incompetence coupled with a mean-spirited, obnoxious arrogance.

"Flying is stressful enough without the ordeal we experienced at Munich Airport yesterday. After an incredible Adele concert, our journey home turned into a nightmare. Check-in and security took a staggering three hours. The process was painfully slow, with staff seemingly indifferent to whether passengers would make their flights. Excessive scrutiny of families and children was particularly frustrating given the limited time before boarding. It's clear that a drastic overhaul of security procedures is needed. The airport could learn a lot from Adele's concert organizers, who managed a crowd of 80,000 flawlessly."

This is a terrible airport. The staff at the check in desk and security were lovely and helpful, however that is where the positives end.

The signage is non-existent, unless we asked a member of staff where our gate was we wouldn’t have had a clue. We had to walk outside for some strange reason to go to a different section.

The security video says you can put your electronics in your bag, turns out you can’t because we were asked to remove them and put them on a tray.

We then had to walk for 10 minutes to go to an unnecessary passport control instead of having it checked at the gate like any other sensible place. The queue was incredibly long, people pushing in and jumping the queue out of desperation and the police couldn’t care less.

There were around 7/8 stations where police were meant to be checking our passports, however for a significant amount of time there were only two police working at them.

We only just got on our plane with about 5/10 minutes to go, when we should have had time to eat etc.

All in all a disastrously organised place, very disappointed with passport control police who frankly didn’t seem to care. If you are planning to come to this airport my first recommendation would be don’t, but if you must come about 4 hours early just to be on the safe side.

For a nation that’s known for its efficiency, I’ve never seen anything less efficient in my life.

If any other security check in the world would be as slow as the security check at Munich airport Terminal 1 no flight would ever leave on time. One check open only and a long queue with the staff just not bothering and being super slow in checking the travelers. What a ridiculous service and nobody seems to bother. Please do a benchmark with other international airports and you will be surprised. A total disaster!

Quite the worst airport I have used in 30 years including Dushanbe. Hard to gett,illogical flows and completely understaffed passport control. If this is the European future we should be very worried

Germany at its worst! Poor signage, long walks and disastrous Passport Control!

Munich is a wonderful place to visit, I've been several times in the last 10 years but the last two times (in twelve months) I've experienced Passport Control. This year, July 31st, I allowed 2 hours 30 minutes to clear security and passport control. After clearing security and then a very long walk I'm faced with a queue several hundred deep and two officers to process them. Passengers from the Middle East, UK and further afield were shouting, pushing and nearly fighting because they were missing their flights

I finally cleared passport control 10 minutes late. Fortunately there were so many passengers on the same flight, British Airways had to delay take off.

Each passenger having their passports stamped, how retro is that! Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Palma and even Tampa in USA cleared within minutes. I will not be going back to Munich until I know this problem has been solved. Travellers beware this is a serious problem which in my opinion is deliberate!

What a joke of an airport! You would think they would have their stuff together as the city is so well organised. The airport is like a maze to conduct, the check in desk was firstly in a completely different section to our security, we had to walk outside for 15 minutes. Nothing is clearly signed posted. When we got to security it was so unorganised and felt quite unsafe, people could walk in and out of the queue. We arrived to the airport at 8am for our 10:55 am flight, just under 3 hours before hand, security queue was just under an hour, an then after this excuse for security, we then had to walk another 10 minutes to the other end of the terminal for passport control, these officers were the slowest things i’ve ever seen. We didn’t have any time for food as we had planned even though we allowed plenty of time for it, we also thought we might miss our flight. But got there with enough time to board.

This airport needs to organise themselves better as it does not work, it is extremely confusing for passengers to know where they need to go.

I lost a connecting flight between Munich and Bilbao. I arrived from Tbilisi on time and had a stopover of 1h15 but the security check was ridiculously slow. We asked several times to try to move faster and to jump the queue but the personnel there did not allow that and did absolutely no effort to make the process faster. In addition to that, there attitude was extremely unpleasant towards us. It seemed that the security personnel were wanting to do a covert strike.

Just when you get through one endless queue, another appears before you.

Terrible lines and customer service.
Could be the worst airport in Europe

An appalling experience at Munich airport with interminable delays and condescending unhelpful staff. Getting through security and passport control took almost two hours since most of the booths were unmanned. Passengers became desperate as gate closure times passed and there was much pushing and shoving in the queues and bad tempers on display. When passengers pleaded that they were in danger of missing flights they were told that this was of no concern to the security officers who had a job to do. It appeared to most of us in the queue that airport security delighted in their power over passengers, particularly since most were British waiting to board a BA flight to Heathrow. This is a truly terrible airport which I will do my utmost to avoid in the future.

Nothing to eat at 8.30 pm in gate K. 😣

The attitude and tone of the security staff when going through the scanner at terminal 1 Gate C at 16:00 hrs on 17 July was a disgrace! They were very condescending and unhelpful when I merely had not taken some wrappers and a towel out of my pocket before going through the scanner! Never had this issue at any other airport before! Their reaction to this was overzealous and rude! They then spoke negatively about me in German, right in front of me! I understand It must be a stressful job (I work in customer service myself) but taking their dislike of their job out on those of us who are not being rude to them is completely unacceptable! It made an already stressful process of going through security even more worse and humiliating! Have lodged a complaint for all the good it will probably do!

The queue at the internal passport check was horrendous with only 3 (other passports) booths open. I'm not sure why you even need an internal check for flights between EU countries. perhaps 'brexit punishment' as UK citizens had to join external passengers who are more likely to have queries about visas etc. I do appreciate that UK citizens currently need a date stamp but suspect it will only get a lot worse with the forthcoming fingerprinting/face ID changes. A few booths did open later but it really needed one person from customer services to go up and down the line looking at boarding cards and help people who were in serious danger of missing connecting flights and give them a unique booth (this would also stop the queue jumpers). Don't even try and connect with less than two hours layover time. Airlines should not be permitted to sell tickets with less than a two hour transfer time at either Munich or Frankfurt.

Shocking. They have 6 passport control booths for people from some countries like the UK and for those countries only two booths allowing people through. It was very strange that others from the USA or Korea for example went through quickly through other booths so wasn’t related to being in the EU as we originally thought. We waited 1 and a half hours after disembarking in a stuffy long queue after an EasyJet flight which was already an hour late due to Munich air traffic control issues.
Returning it was the same story. This time it took an hour to get through the passport control as they again only had two open. The queue was really long again and again it proceeded at a snail’s pace. Really bad planning and very disrespectful of people from the countries they sent in our queue direction but not for others. Why is this?The flight was again well over two hours late again due to air traffic control.

This is the worst airport I’ve ever travelled to and from. I expected more from Germany. I would never travel through this awful airport again.

I’m not one to leave reviews, and please note I’ve had very pleasant experiences with other staff members, but Munich’s international security was incredibly insulting, aggressive and confusing. Particularly, an older woman who was working in Terminal 1 for gate C at 4:40am on 7/12/24. I don’t speak German, however, i’ve gone through security multiple times with no issues in Frankfurt or any other airport for that matter. She was socializing amongst her colleague as i stood there and waited to get scanned. I looked over at her and she’s suddenly yelling at me in German, So I asked her if she spoke English because I couldn’t understand what she was saying, and also had no idea what i was doing wrong as the pose is very self explanatory. She then approaches me and continues to yell at me in German and eventually said “This is an international flight. Copy the pose in front of you!!!”, which i had been doing while she was socializing with her coworker. Not sure why she felt the need to remind me that i’m flying internationally, (im guessing she just wanted to release her anger as i was very aware of where i was going) especially because i had followed instructions in the first place, but we were disgusted with her unnecessary behavior and demeanor. There was also no line behind us. She was deliberately rude, and her coworker also laughed at her insulting me, which was also unprofessional. Coming from the US, our airport security is known for no-nonsense, but there is no comparison to how i was treated here. So unprofessional and very unlike the rest of the German culture i’ve experienced. Frankfurt’s security was much kinder and far more professional.

I’d also like to note that i absolutely understand how airport security is taken very seriously, regardless of the airport. It’s standard procedure and keeps everyone safe, but to treat people this way is disgusting. I would be shocked if no one else has complained about this individual, whom lacks basic control over their emotions

Very helpful all personel, including service center and policemen, honest.

The attitude of the immigration officer was appalling, not the slightest acknowledgement, clearly not happy to be there. A disgrace to the uniform.

An unfortunate welcome to Germany.

I think I spent more time in the passport queue than I did on the flight. I thought it was a once off as only one ‘jobsworth’ chap on the desk and about 200 plus people to process but had the same experience flying out - in fact worse. No one seems bothered by the number of anxious people worried about missing their flights….. not efficient or customer centric. Head of the airport needs to look into this as flights get delayed waiting for people and the whole ecosystem is disrupted.

1. Air Canada check in was complete and utter chaos. I don’t know if only 4 people per day are flying to Canada from Munich, but it surely seems the case. 3 gate agents for normal people and one for ‘priority’… and they couldn’t even show up on time. Can we be for real? Like.. Please. Spent Two And A Half (emphatically) hours waiting for one singular employee to show up… And then when they did, they spent 30 minutes putting out a sign. I would say it’s a general Canadian problem, however, the agents were very much German. What happened to Germany being efficient? Guess that’s gone out the window

2. We arrived to the LOVELY security line with the most fantastically indifferent employees i’ve ever seen in my entire life! The TVs lied to us saying it’d be 10-15… meanwhile it’s 11:30 and our flight departs at 11:50. By the time we got through security, it was indeed 11:45, but then we had to go through customs. Greeted by the most inefficient customs system that could ever be created, we all tried to enter different lines- except one of them was 18+ only and one of them was EU only. The third lane was just vaguely designated as “Rest”. Very helpful ❤️

3. To conclude our spectacular visit, we did a 5k to make it to our flight which included running, 4 flights of escalators, a train, a slope, and a long bridge to the plane. We were then met by absolutely frantic Air Canada employees who were tweaking out because the entire plane had to be held due to the absolute incompetence and lack of organization that went into the planning of this disastrous, catastrophic, horrific, terrible airport. DO NOT COME HERE