When booking your holidays, how do you choose which airport to fly from? Most of us just find the nearest one that goes where we’re headed, but if you want a stress-free airport experience, it might be worth venturing a bit further afield.
The airport you choose can completely alter your journey. Some have high cancellation rates and long queues, while others are more streamlined and reliable. Consumer brand Which? recently surveyed thousands of Brits on their experiences with hold ups and cancellations in order to create its official 2025 ranking of UK airports. Each airport was ranked in 11 categories ranging from wait times for security, baggage reclaim, and passport control, to how nice the toilets were. Then, an overall score out of 100 was calculated, and a full chart created.
Exeter came first overall with a score of 80 percent, but being tiny – it only serves 500,000 people per year – it is not a major air traffic hub in the UK. That means that the highest scoring mid-large sized airport, seeing more than 500,000 passengers a month in peak season, was Liverpool John Lennon.
Merseyside’s main airport received a customer score of 78 percent from Which?, receiving five out of five stars in nearly half of all categories. The only places it faltered were in the range of shops and cost of food, where it scored three out of five, but that’s a worthy price to pay for no queues and a breeze through security.
Which? describes the atmosphere at LPL as ‘relaxed’ and ‘uncrowded’, and one person even called their experience ‘stress-free’, which is saying a lot when it comes to air travel. The ranking notes that customers repeatedly praised ‘the quick, efficient process and the friendliness of the staff’, and concludes that ‘If you can, fly from here instead of from Manchester’. Manchester, conversely, was the lowest rated of the list.
This isn’t the first time Liverpool John Lennon has been praised. The Telegraph recently named it the best in the country, as did travel advice company Airhelp, and it came first in Which?’s 2024 airport list. Clearly, the hub has managed to keep up the good work.
The best airports in the UK in 2025, according to Which?
Other than Exeter and Liverpool, here are the airports that did well in Which?’s consumer survey:
- Exeter
- Liverpool John Lennon
- London City
- Bournemouth
- Newcastle
- Norwich
- Inverness
- Cardiff
- Southampton
- Belfast City (George Best)
You can see Which?’s full breakdown of the UK’s major airports here.
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