M. R. Štefánik Airport Bratislava — Local services in Bratislava

A tiny airport... Arrivals: When our plane arrived I was surprised to see 3 buses waiting for us. Because the entrance to the airport was maybe 10-20 metres from us. OK, well maybe 100 metres. The bus took us to the hall where we queued for passport control... It literally took forever... No automated booths like at other airports... I can't imagine the queues when 2 or more planes land... You couldn't fit people in this hall... As we were the only plane, this check took forever, we were lucky that our luggage was already unloaded and we could take it with us... A few months later we flew here again. They added these automated gates where you scan your passport/ID/face and go... to the point where they were all closed... We didn't see any information anywhere that they were ever going to be open, other people mentioned in reviews that they used to be closed (actually no one mentioned that they were open). It would be great to have some sort of announcement as to when they will be open.

Departures: Really? The roof seems to be leaking and has been for some time. As you enter the arrivals hall, you can see buckets on the floor collecting water. They are 'subtly' covered with a black cloth so you can't see what's going on. I found a note to this effect in a review 7 months ago, so it's nothing new ("It was raining and the roof was leaking. You have at least four leaks and water is dripping into little containers all over the place"). Because it's a tiny airport, they don't have centralised baggage claim, so if you have hold baggage you have to wait for the "counters" to open for your flight. There's no such thing as a place where you can collect your own luggage and send it to the conveyor belt. So this part of the airport is where most people stay together and has the least amount of seating... Other parts of the airport aren't so crowded, and people have somewhere to spread out. Many parts were empty. Very many seats. The security area was very slow, only 2 rows were open, one of them kept getting stuck on something and people waited ages for it to get moving again. On the plus side, there was no need to unload anything at all, none of that shouting about laptops, cameras, tablets, liquids ....... Awesome!

The great thing is that there is public transport in front of the airport, the most modern vehicles Bratislava has bought are already running on it... No need to take taxis (for which...

Update: 3 years later and nothing has changed.

The gate area still stinks and is an unhealthy environment. No vestibule nor air cleaner.

Utterly shameful in 2022/23.

No smoker even expects to be able to smoke 8n an airport these days.

They still allow smoking in one of the coffee shops in the gate waiting area.

This is horrible when having to wait to board.

There isn't even a double door with extractor which would help.

Other airports work fine with no smoking anywhere.

On the positive side, the baggage security team are friendly and efficient.

Update based on the response from BTS:

The door can't always be closed, it must be opened to allow people to enter and exit. When they do so, smoke is released into the adjoining area.

There needs to be a double door (with an extractor) as a minimum to prevent this.

How can you have a strict non-smoking policy with this happening and also people standing outside the main airport entrance doors where, again, smoke enters the building every time the doors are opened.

It was made even worse on my recent visit as we were delayed for over 4 hours and were not permitted to return to the upstairs lounge/shopping area as we had "already exited shengen". The food vouchers (which were too low in value to get both a snack and a drink in the coffee shop - €5) listed two restaurants which we had no access too. Those should have been crossed off the voucher or some kind of facilitation to re-enter the upstairs made.

When I mentioned the smoke issue to a member of staff I was effectively told "tough, we have no other area". However sometime later a waiting area in a slightly less smoky area was made available but did not seem to be announced. We only discovered this when we asked when collecting...

Security SCAM at Bratislava airport AVOID!!!... according to the security manager international agreements doesn't apply in Baratislava... they have their own small slovac village manual which items are dangerous... not only provincial stupidity but no idea of passanger rights, iternational standarts... next time slovacs goes to travel strip them from their bags and say sorry... not permitted in your village... apparently a tent is not a terrorist item in US but a weapon in Slovakia... let me go with 5 razer blades on board an took my tent bars as potential weapon. Ryanair doesn't prohibit tents to be taken on board as long as they are wiyhin dimensions... BANGKOK, GOTTEBORG, LONDON, OVDA, TEL AVIV, KRAKOW, GDANSK, SOFIA, ATHENS, SEOIL, HONG KONG, PHUKET didn't consider tent bars without spikes prohibited but the villagers from Bratislava have written their own rules....

You can definitely take a tent on a plane as hand luggage as long as it meets the size restrictions set by the airline operator. A one man tent is almost a given. ... Per TSA regulatons it is not prohibited to bring a tent on board an aircraft.

UPDATE: Just bought new tent and flew from BKK - DUS and STR - HRG and OVD-BTS. Security at both BKK and STR didn't even ask one single question about the tent. In Israel got a torough examination for about 1hour they don't even mention the tent. See pictures included below as a proof that Slovac security is harasing travelers due to complete lack of proper training and professional knowledge. Was it so difficult to admit that a passanger may know better than you? You prefer not to lose face and to screw my rights and the EU and Slovac authorities are covering you because one hand wash the other... but your time will come to stand the line in the...