I'm a professional chauffeur and routinely meet and collect passengers from Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton.

The main problems with Luton are:

The car park is some distance from the arrivals hall and is an open air walk. This means that there's the obvious possibility of my passengers getting very wet on the walk to the car if it happens to be raining.

The temperature inside the arrivals hall is set to 'tropical'. This means that on a cold or wet day - because of the long walk from the car park - it is necessary to wear a raincoat or overcoat. Inside the arrivals hall one would be more comfortable in Bermuda shorts.

Luton Airport is OK. Not the best or worst. Security is usually an ordeal with rude staff who have probably taken a course in being obnoxious but think most airports are like that nowadays. Well not all of them are quite that bad. Staff generally are nice and helpful. It has been turned into a shopping mall and there is a really long walk to departures because of this. Really not suited to elderly or people bad in walk. best option would be to book assistance. Low cost airlines generally provide poor service and this can reflect badly on Luton sometimes unfairly.

This is an old airport, I last used it about 30years ago and the bag of rubbish behind the door then was still there in Feb 09. (I am kidding, but only a little). In Feb 09 there was serious snow which upset thing quite a lot. It merely gave the low cost airlines a ready made excuse for their crass incompetence, rudeness and pandemic lateness.
The new departure terminal was a great opportunity, but was as you may have guessed, was missed BADLY. It looks like someone has built a shopping mall near the airport, then as an afterthought, decided it could also double up as departure hall. The exits to the gates are hidden away in the far corner, there is little or no view to the outside and everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING is sacrificed in order to create more retail space. The outlets are the usual selection of boring drab shops staffed by moronic, underpaid, uninterested, rude, unhelpful teenagers. They get paid almost nothing, so why should we expect anything else.. Sorry, but I can find nothing nice to say about LTN. This place gives air travel a bad name.

I have been to many different airports and this is by far the worst. The staff are very rude in all areas, check in, security, and service staff and many times there aren't enough people at the immigration and they are a bit rude because they are obviously overworked. There aren't many options to eat if you want something other than pre-packaged stuff or fast food, especially after security. I have only have had one flight leave on time, and they are extremely slow off loading the luggage. Once I had a hour wait from when we landed and when the bags from my flight started to appear in the baggage reclaim. If you can go to another London airport, if you are going budget airlines see if you can go from Stansted, it is much nicer and more accessible by public transport. I would always use that one if the flights for my destination there were at a better time. Luton is an annoying airport to get to, the train station isn't even at the airport, you have to take a bus to the station. I only take the coach if I have to get there because the train services to and from there are so bad. I would give it less than 1* if there was the option.

I have used Luton airport on 6 occasions in the past 6 months. All flights have been on time, the airport has been uncongested, even at peak times, and I have had no problems with staff. The new facilities are generally excellent.

The car parks are close to the terminal, and road access from the M1 motorway is very quick, even in rush hours (10 minutes max). My experiences are far better at Luton than at Heathrow (pure Hell), Gatwick (slow and confusing with everything far apart) and Stansted (impossible to get to, except from east London).