It's been very interesting to read all the comments about people putting off overseas holidays because of "all that faff" at the airports. We were due to go to Italy in mid June & I was worried sick about the airport business, due entirely to the overactive press. We were flying from Stansted with Ryanair at 11am. We duly rolled up about 3.5 hours before the flight, as advised by Ryanair, who also said the bag drop wouldn't open until 2 hours before departure. When we arrived at the airport, we were able to drop our bags straight away - no queues, we went straight to the scales. Then it was on to security - again, we went straight to the officials and were through in no time - in fact, from leaving our hotel room, walking to the terminal and going through to the lounges took less than 20 minutes. Similarly, on our return at around 5.30 pm, we went straight through passport control, no queues whatsoever, although it was annoying to have to walk backwards & forwards through the barriers erected to cope with potential long lines of folks. We had the most wonderful holiday ,& are hoping to go to Turkey in October. So don't be put off by reports from some time ago when the queues were, at some airports & at some times of day, very bad.