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Friday 4 September 2009

World Class – No Chance

Travelling by air starts with an airport, and today’s was Manchester, recently dumped by Ryanair after standing firm on passenger charges. It’s probably the busiest airport outside the South East, so you’d expect it to be fit for purpose. As if.

First signs were promising: the escalators from station to concourse and then up to the overhead walkway were both working, and so apparently were the lifts (not always the case).
Unfortunately, once on the walkway, two out of three travelators were out of service, which is unacceptable. The escalator from the Swiss check-in up to Security was back in use, though.

And Security was also not fit for purpose, with queues of punters having to be held back as the number of staff on scan and search duty couldn’t move the masses quickly enough.

Following this, the arrangement in Terminal 1 whereby everyone is forced to walk through the allegedly duty free shop en route to the gate was still in place. Anyone from the Airport in the room? Cut this out – if you can’t get enough punters in the duty free without coercion, that’s your lookout.

Then, other than there being far too few places to sit without making use of one or other retail outlets, it was off to the gate and away. Eventually.

No doubt there will be more shortcomings to observe on the way back. Ho hum.

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