Manchester Airport. How can it be so bad?
Discussion
Came back through MAN from work last week and was in the taxi within 20 minutes of stepping off the aircraft. It seems to be purely down to luck of the draw.
It would help if so many passports didn’t get rejected by the automated machines. You don’t see it in any other countries and I never have an issue. However, I have three UK passports and not one of them works on UK machines - it’s a complete ball ache and they just treat you like an idiot when you ask why they never work.
We weren’t feeling brave enough for MAN or LBA for our holiday this week so went for Doncaster Sheffield. What an absolute joy - parked right outside the front door, five minutes check in, five minutes security and sat in Costa with a bacon sandwich two hours before departure. My new favourite and will request it for work for the summer. Shame the schedule is a bit s
t.
It would help if so many passports didn’t get rejected by the automated machines. You don’t see it in any other countries and I never have an issue. However, I have three UK passports and not one of them works on UK machines - it’s a complete ball ache and they just treat you like an idiot when you ask why they never work.
We weren’t feeling brave enough for MAN or LBA for our holiday this week so went for Doncaster Sheffield. What an absolute joy - parked right outside the front door, five minutes check in, five minutes security and sat in Costa with a bacon sandwich two hours before departure. My new favourite and will request it for work for the summer. Shame the schedule is a bit s
t. Crumpet said:
It would help if so many passports didn’t get rejected by the automated machines. You don’t see it in any other countries and I never have an issue. However, I have three UK passports and not one of them works on UK machines - it’s a complete ball ache and they just treat you like an idiot when you ask why they never work.
What they don't tell you but have a suspicion may be your answer is the multiple passports. I had 2 neither worked. One never worked from brand new & a week old. As soon as one expired the other one worked. vindaloo79 said:
Shnozz said:
Monkeylegend said:
Absolute carnage this morning everywhere it seems.
And yes I know how you all feel about the Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10808337/...
Yep - as per my post yesterday morning, LBA was a snake queue throughout the entire airport. We had to be pulled out of the queue and fast tracked to make the gate before it closed. Worst I have ever witnessed.And yes I know how you all feel about the Daily Mail
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10808337/...
Friends of mine were flying from there a little later in the day and said it had eased by then but early morning was chaos.
I did feel for those with kids and the elderly.
GT03ROB said:
Crumpet said:
It would help if so many passports didn’t get rejected by the automated machines. You don’t see it in any other countries and I never have an issue. However, I have three UK passports and not one of them works on UK machines - it’s a complete ball ache and they just treat you like an idiot when you ask why they never work.
What they don't tell you but have a suspicion may be your answer is the multiple passports. I had 2 neither worked. One never worked from brand new & a week old. As soon as one expired the other one worked. I was watching Tuesday Tui flights from Manchester to Florida (Melbourne), which went about 8 hours late.
Much of this apparently was because the plane which normally positions from Birmingham went to Newcastle first. This was to collect a good amount of luggage, which was left behind on Monday's Newcastle flight as they did not have enough hold bins.
Given that it took days to recover from this delay this must have cost them a lot of money!
Much of this apparently was because the plane which normally positions from Birmingham went to Newcastle first. This was to collect a good amount of luggage, which was left behind on Monday's Newcastle flight as they did not have enough hold bins.
Given that it took days to recover from this delay this must have cost them a lot of money!
GT03ROB said:
Crumpet said:
It would help if so many passports didn’t get rejected by the automated machines. You don’t see it in any other countries and I never have an issue. However, I have three UK passports and not one of them works on UK machines - it’s a complete ball ache and they just treat you like an idiot when you ask why they never work.
What they don't tell you but have a suspicion may be your answer is the multiple passports. I had 2 neither worked. One never worked from brand new & a week old. As soon as one expired the other one worked. s during covid has helped matters - multiple arguments, in fact! Manchester Border Force are utter clowns and made their own, very special, interpretations of the regulations during the pandemic. I'm seeing more issues on social media and in the press than I am hearing from people actually travelling. The picture painted is that the airport is packed with queues 24 hours a way.
We flew to Alicante on 23rd April and was advised to arrive 3 hours before departure .... this was a Saturday 4:30pm flight. Considering we had our bikes to check in, I was prepared for the worst. It was possibly one of the quickest check in experiences I've ever had at Manchester .... from parking at T1 multi-storey, we were sat in pret having some lunch in less than 30 mins.
No queue at check in, no queue at oversized baggage or at security (definitely a first). Now I know that a Saturday afternoon should be quiet but I expected some sort of delay. If anything, security looked very heavily staffed.
We came back on 30th around lunchtime ... usual 15-20 min security queue and that was about it.
I saw Leeds was carnage this Monday am from someone I know!
We flew to Alicante on 23rd April and was advised to arrive 3 hours before departure .... this was a Saturday 4:30pm flight. Considering we had our bikes to check in, I was prepared for the worst. It was possibly one of the quickest check in experiences I've ever had at Manchester .... from parking at T1 multi-storey, we were sat in pret having some lunch in less than 30 mins.
No queue at check in, no queue at oversized baggage or at security (definitely a first). Now I know that a Saturday afternoon should be quiet but I expected some sort of delay. If anything, security looked very heavily staffed.
We came back on 30th around lunchtime ... usual 15-20 min security queue and that was about it.
I saw Leeds was carnage this Monday am from someone I know!
JEA1K said:
I'm seeing more issues on social media and in the press than I am hearing from people actually travelling. The picture painted is that the airport is packed with queues 24 hours a way.
We flew to Alicante on 23rd April and was advised to arrive 3 hours before departure .... this was a Saturday 4:30pm flight. Considering we had our bikes to check in, I was prepared for the worst. It was possibly one of the quickest check in experiences I've ever had at Manchester .... from parking at T1 multi-storey, we were sat in pret having some lunch in less than 30 mins.
No queue at check in, no queue at oversized baggage or at security (definitely a first). Now I know that a Saturday afternoon should be quiet but I expected some sort of delay. If anything, security looked very heavily staffed.
We came back on 30th around lunchtime ... usual 15-20 min security queue and that was about it.
I saw Leeds was carnage this Monday am from someone I know!
I think you are probably right. With regards to LBA, when I looked at the flight schedule for yesterday morning it had an abundance of flights but only a third of the security carousels running. So it seems it was purely down to lack of staffing or organisation to have all of them operational when the schedule is busy. We have all read about the staffing issues effecting airports post-Covid.We flew to Alicante on 23rd April and was advised to arrive 3 hours before departure .... this was a Saturday 4:30pm flight. Considering we had our bikes to check in, I was prepared for the worst. It was possibly one of the quickest check in experiences I've ever had at Manchester .... from parking at T1 multi-storey, we were sat in pret having some lunch in less than 30 mins.
No queue at check in, no queue at oversized baggage or at security (definitely a first). Now I know that a Saturday afternoon should be quiet but I expected some sort of delay. If anything, security looked very heavily staffed.
We came back on 30th around lunchtime ... usual 15-20 min security queue and that was about it.
I saw Leeds was carnage this Monday am from someone I know!
My mates flew out in the early afternoon and all was well wit the world.
Luck of the draw in that regard.
I also think people are arriving at the airport far earlier due to what they have read in the press and also by Ryanair also sending 3 hour texts to people warning them of queues. That in itself seems to be meaning a bottleneck of people arriving out of sync with what time they ordinarily would, where other folks are arriving in the usual two hours before, some one hour etc.
Shnozz said:
I think you are probably right. With regards to LBA, when I looked at the flight schedule for yesterday morning it had an abundance of flights but only a third of the security carousels running. So it seems it was purely down to lack of staffing or organisation to have all of them operational when the schedule is busy. We have all read about the staffing issues effecting airports post-Covid.
My mates flew out in the early afternoon and all was well wit the world.
Luck of the draw in that regard.
I also think people are arriving at the airport far earlier due to what they have read in the press and also by Ryanair also sending 3 hour texts to people warning them of queues. That in itself seems to be meaning a bottleneck of people arriving out of sync with what time they ordinarily would, where other folks are arriving in the usual two hours before, some one hour etc.
In my desperation to avoid mega queues I've done a far more than is healthy amount of reading about this. It definitely looks like early mornings are worse. Probably a function of many of the low cost carrier flights being very early in the morning.My mates flew out in the early afternoon and all was well wit the world.
Luck of the draw in that regard.
I also think people are arriving at the airport far earlier due to what they have read in the press and also by Ryanair also sending 3 hour texts to people warning them of queues. That in itself seems to be meaning a bottleneck of people arriving out of sync with what time they ordinarily would, where other folks are arriving in the usual two hours before, some one hour etc.
JeffreyD said:
In my desperation to avoid mega queues I've done a far more than is healthy amount of reading about this. It definitely looks like early mornings are worse. Probably a function of many of the low cost carrier flights being very early in the morning.
Just ask on here, many of us have airport apps that show things like queue times in security for various airports etcMornings are definitely worse (like any airport congestion) as that’s when the first wave depart and all the people get in early so there’s loads waiting then to check in or go through security.
Shnozz said:
I also think people are arriving at the airport far earlier due to what they have read in the press and also by Ryanair also sending 3 hour texts to people warning them of queues. That in itself seems to be meaning a bottleneck of people arriving out of sync with what time they ordinarily would, where other folks are arriving in the usual two hours before, some one hour etc.
I did wonder if this was part of the issue - people ending up holding others up because they're being checked in for flights 3 hours later. The problem is, why would you risk a week abroad for the sake of an extra hour at the airport? I'm flying in a week or so and have just been to see if there are likely to be any flight check-ins that compete with mine.Flew from T3 on Saturday at lunchtime to Berlin on Ryan Air.
Got an email saying get there 3 hours before flight.
Complete waste of time as there was very little queueing for security.
All went well.
Flight back on Tuesday was relatively easy.
Did have issues with the automatic passport control.
Seemed like about 20% had passports rejected which slowed us down.
We all had hand luggage only.
Got an email saying get there 3 hours before flight.
Complete waste of time as there was very little queueing for security.
All went well.
Flight back on Tuesday was relatively easy.
Did have issues with the automatic passport control.
Seemed like about 20% had passports rejected which slowed us down.
We all had hand luggage only.
Edited by mikebradford on Thursday 12th May 20:05
A little tip for you all regarding the automatic passport readers. A common issue that happens is when you slide your passport in, the page can fold/roll up ever so slightly so the scanner cant see details along the top line and/or expected details at the bottom aren't in place.
Make sure the page goes in absolutely flat, try not to slide your passport all of the way, rather place it and then slide it to final position. This was shown to me a while back and generally I have no problems anymore.
Make sure the page goes in absolutely flat, try not to slide your passport all of the way, rather place it and then slide it to final position. This was shown to me a while back and generally I have no problems anymore.
AyBee said:
I did wonder if this was part of the issue - people ending up holding others up because they're being checked in for flights 3 hours later. The problem is, why would you risk a week abroad for the sake of an extra hour at the airport? I'm flying in a week or so and have just been to see if there are likely to be any flight check-ins that compete with mine.
Fair point if it’s an annual holiday but I live between the U.K. and abroad so fly every other week or so. Same for those who fly for work weekly. Last thing I want is 3+ hours in an airport on top of my commute. Especially if it’s in a queue rather than the lounge.
Only good part is if queues mean I miss a flight I can just go back to the respective house.
We met up with a big group in Morocco who all travelled through different airports - no one who travelled through other airports including Gatwick and Edinburgh had any issue but everyone moaned about Manchester despite coming through at different times on different days.
I don't mind queueing but the general feeling of utter choas with lots of shouting and terrible organisation isn't particularly pleasant!
I don't mind queueing but the general feeling of utter choas with lots of shouting and terrible organisation isn't particularly pleasant!
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