Sharm El Sheikh International Airport — Local services in South Sinai

This is literally the worst airport ever. It is like someone who dislikes travellers has actively tried to make it bad and succeeded.

We arrived at 7pm to the first of 7 passport checks. Passport check one at the door. Place is stuffed with tourist rubbish souvenirs and scammers trying to get every last penny out of you. After a while we find the easyJet check in lines in chaos. this takes over 2 hours to get through the line somehow. disabled guests bags were constantly jumped through the queue. pushing the entire crowd back and almost causing several fights instead of anywhere else where they use a closed lane and an agent moves over for the few minutes it takes. Passport check 2 at the bag drop and collect customs forms. No one but a few of us brought a pen with us so there's several hundred passengers begging for pens. Bags dropped we go to customs. more rude staff when trying to find out what lanes are open. Passport check 3 at customs. On to security. All in the scanners including shoes and pat downs. security staff take our belongings from the X-ray to a bench 10 feet away then start aggressivly demanding money as a tip for this unwanted help. Passport check 4 at security

A quick drink after taking nearly 3 hours to get to departures we find our gate 9. It is one of 4 heavily used gates inside a giant sealed room with a door at one end and an incredibly rude man letting people in. there is a queue barrier system but no organisation at all. anywhere else you would be let in a sit to wait. instead he calls all the flights and after half hour in the line he realises the first flight out should have been called first so he stops everyone and calls the first flight expecting everyone waiting to leave the line. the passengers in this chaos worked together to arrange the line into flight order while he barks at random families, kicks people out the line who's flight is about to leave and other nonsense. with 10 minutes until our flight time we finally reach the front where he tries to kick us to the back of the now 45 minute line. I explain we will miss the flight, explain our flight is next up but he is so caught up in his short man power trip that he does not care. He shouts in my face "this is not my fault" I'm not sure whose fault he thinks it is but he is the one causing chaos with the queue. I ask for his manager to get this sorted and again he keeps shouting at my wife, 2 young daughters and I to get back. I ask where to wait as we will block the doorway if we get back. My daughter overwhelmed gets upset and a very nice gate agent lady runs over to help. Now faced with all of this he decides to let us through but as a last petty angry jab puts us through the "randomly" selected security check. There were very confused police/ security asking why they were doing a full check and swab on a family including a 14 year old teary girl. Passport check 5 was this horrible petty man.

Almost as soon as we were in the room we were being boarded. the whole flight made to stand around the edge of the room to be boarded by 1 agent. the passengers have now all become comrades in this absurd situation. passport check 6 is at boarding. Now we get on the bus to the plane right? Passport check 7 is 4 feet away from passport check 6 by another guy before we can get on the bus. total insanity!

We get on the bus to the plane. some passengers are laughing and some are crying as this ordeal comes to an end. As we approach the plane the bus driver does an emergency stop causing a dozen passengers to fly across the bus, several look lightly injured but do not dare speak out. Better not to and just get on the plane. We get on the plane and are greeted by an incredibly nice and polite easyJet...

Disgraceful airport experience and one designed to intimidate passengers, with ALL staff going completely out of their way to maximise stress to those who they are meant to be serving.

From the moment you step off of the coach, the fleas leap straight onto you, harassing you to use a trolley (for all of five yards).

Long queue just to get inside of the airport, no communication as to what is expected of you to get through, just angry staff shouting orders at you. Another opportunity for the fleas to pounce on you, with an offer of $30 per passenger for a completely pointless fast track of the queue (pointless, because the real fun begins once you get inside).

This is a completely backwards airport, which doesn't accept boarding passes on phones (which has been around for about 10 years). They want printed out paper ones. If you don't provide them, then it is a few harsh words before sendind you straight back to the end of the queue.

Once you're through that ordeal, if you thought that was bad, here's where the real fun begins. The bag drop area, the baggage conveyor belt had broken (I was told by the checking in official that 'it happens all the time'. But nobody tells you that it is broken. Through word of mouth and no communication via the zombie looking check in staff, passengers start lining up their cases alongside them. Once you eventually get to the front of the queue, the check in staff, then manually guide you back to your case and then place a tag on it! You then have to leave it and hope for the best that your case makes it onto the plane!

Next step, you then have to fill out an exit visa, then a queue for a further scan of your hand luggage and a full body pat down, including putting each leg onto a step and they run their hands up and down your legs like a full pat down. Your hand luggage is being scanned whilst you're being patted down, then without you knowing, workers are taking your luggage from the scanner, taking your trays off then you've no idea where they are dumping them, so you have to hunt for your belongings! A few paces after that ordeal and there is a menacing policeman who looks you up and down before allowing you to pass through.

So you've finally made it through to the other side. You're hungry and want to get some food. We found a Burger King. A growing queue, one person serving, but it's Ramadan, so instead of serving passengers, who are now totally stressed out from the above ordeal, they now have a reduced period of time to eat before boarding, but instead of serving passengers, they're serving starving workers who have been fasting all day, couldn't care less for the passengers, who instead of stood in a queue whilst watching the workers sat eating!

Boarding gate. An absolute joke! No announcements, other than some obnoxious idiot shouting something which could not be understood. Long queues of people stood in the wrong queues. You finally get through and are quite literally crammed into transit buses like sardines, than the idiot driving starts doing doughnuts throwing everybody around!

This airport needs a serious review! Absolutely disgrace of a place and as much as we had a great holiday, A) Do not go during Ramadan because as soon as the sun goes down, you're dropped like a brick whilst they go off to stuff their faces. I get it, people are hungry, but have a system in place! Alternatively, don't allow tourists in during Ramadan, but this is a case of wanting your cake...

Firstly I would have put zero stars but you can’t unfortunately! By far the worst airport We’ve ever been to. Never met so many rude and ignorant people(staff) in one place. It was like they hated us. I got on the plane finally and I was fuming! We got to the check in desk where there were queues as usual. Then they opened another desk and we were luckily at the front.Great we thought! The lady didn’t have a clue what she was doing. We were there for ages trying to check in. A big queue behind had built up but she just wasn’t bothered. We watched numerous people getting checked in from the other queues while we stood waiting!(annoying). We finally got checked in then had to fill a card out for passport control. Got to the passport check and a couple in front of us were being really scrutanised! They had to have photos taken,fingerprints taken,show extra ID and were questioned for ages(holding our queue up again!)Poor people! After having my passport snatched out my hand and grunted at a few times thru the security checks we arrived at another security check where there was no boxes to put your belongings in to go thru the scanner so I said to a guard ‘are there any boxes we can use?’ He told me to ‘shush’ and put his fingers across his lips like a zip!! I wanted to smash his face! He then put 4 boxes stacked on top of each other on the floor and kicked them over to us! I wanted to smash his face again! After putting my belongings in the box thru the scanner he called me thru the scanning machine for men(separate one for females) he physically searched me and snorted like a pig right in my face! I wanted to smash him again! What an horrible ignorant human(used loosely) We then thought we would get a Burger King meal while we were there. Unbelievable! I’ve never seen such a rude and ignorant front of shop worker ever! He was the only server with one other person doing the cooking!(They were arguing with each other as well) The way he spoke to people was unbelievable! Everyone was looking at each other shaking their heads at this blokes attitude and lack of manners! We had to go thru yet another security check point to get to the gate(gate9) where they randomly pulled people to check through their hand luggage(even tho it had all ready gone thru 3 security scanners!) There were 4 gates all closely next to each other with one holding area which was so unorganised, people didn’t know where to stand or queue up. Then people formed a queue and loads just pushed in from the isles(so annoying). We didn’t see a smile or a nice acknowledgment from any of the airport staff at all. All very rude and ignorant. We enjoyed our time at the hotel we stayed but the coming home airport experience spoilt it for me and we won’t probably return.We were warned about the airport but when you experience it, it really puts you off...