Manchester Airport

Manchester used to be one of the best airports to collect your hire car with the collection point on top of the multi-storey car park. Now they have a car hire a 5 minute drive away. Waiting for the bus is a pain. You then have to lug your bags onto the bus with little room the cars are all outside and at night it is badly lit. Manchester for me is now on a par with Luton for car hire collection.

Travelled through Manchester Airport with family arriving Sunday morning and departing in the evening. There were no delays although having the car rental village away from the terminal does increase the time needed to collect and drop off the vehicle. On our return we queued for the security check about half an hour. My son had gone through earlier paying for the swift transit and managed to keep his bottle of coke. He was happy about that but it does show it is just a money gathering exercise. We were unfortunately delayed by our airline and the only place eventually open for a hot drink in Terminal 1 was Real Food which had undrinkable coffee.

Arriving from Dubai terminal one meant a long walk down a portakabin style corridor. You pay one pound non refundable for a trolley. Very narrow exit doors for luggage. To reach hire cars village meant journey across cluttered pavement to bus stop. 10 minute wait for bus with limited luggage racks. Also means ditching said one pound trolley. Hire car village some 5 minutes bus drive away. All cars unsheltered and road signing for newcomers to find exit to a specific town is awful. Manchester is a poor airport that just seems set to make money from shopping and add bits and pieces of terminals without view of big picture.

Terminal facilities are ok sometimes a bit confusing and relatively long walks. However short walk to (good organized) car rental centre. Good accessibility by car and rail (short ride to city centre and good cross- country services to the North). Quite a long distance to the draughty rail station the signposting could be optimized.

Most recent experience at T3 (MAN-LHR) was alright except for the security procedures of 'randomly' selecting passengers for a body scan and a shoe inspection. There are two separate lines that are separated by a glass wall. The first line one surrenders one's items (hand luggage jackets computers etc.) as usual for the x-ray scan. Then if one is unlucky one is instructed to step to the side to another line with a turnstile that turns green when it's okay to proceed to the body scan. Very slow official will then have you surrender your shoes to be x-rayed! And worse as in my experience there are 3 other officials to check one passenger. All the while the queue is growing and growing with other 'randomly' selected passengers. Worse is that one can see while waiting in that long queue through the glass wall in the first line that one's hand luggage and other items have already been scanned and are just waiting in the tray idling. If they are going to search people make sure that they have not 4 officials to do so but one and to speed it up. Otherwise T3 is a bit strange as once all of the craziness of the security checks are over one walks down a very long corridor to meet up with the departures lounge that doubles as shopping/eating areas. I just cannot understand UK security practices these days. I had hoped that Manchester would have been better than Heathrow. In general UK security checks make Paris CDG seem like a paradise as CDG used to years ago have similar security checks but have since stopped the unnecessary busy work sort of ridiculous harassing 'checks'.

Manchester airport is excellent. All 3 terminals are clean well laid out and they all have good shopping and eating facilities. The airport has been re-done. Manchester has good connections with 3 flights a day to Dubai including the A380 10 flights a week to Doha 1 a day to Singapore and other flights to New York Atlanta Washington DC Las Vegas Islamabad and Philadelphia!

Queuing for Boarding Pass plus Security - 2 hours. Completely unacceptable. People were being called out of the queue so they could sprint for their flights. Insufficient numbers of security staff.

Overzealous security (although nice). Everything but a strip search on a flight between EU countries. Queues you wont believe as a result. After security you had to walk through a mall to get to gate. Extremely stressful! Up and down stairs to get to the correct gate. Does not fulfil the basic requirements of a traveller; maybe get something to eat or drink and get to the aircraft in an effective way.

In the last 3 weeks Terminal 3 security screening queues have been horrendous right out to the corridor. On one occasion asked why the problem and was informed new rota starting should sort it out then the next time same queues again and asked was told people sick surely they have on call staff for illness at airports? Anyhow I got there at 06.50am for a 07.55 flight and just about made it no luggage etc. But now I am having to buy fast track as I do not trust what is happening there however I feel it is a management change not sickness etc.

When travelling from Manchester via Heathrow to Singapore then onto Brisbane I expected to receive all of my boarding passes. I checked in at Terminal 3 at the British Airways desk and only received the pass to Heathrow when I questioned this the check in lady said in a very unhelpful attitude to get my passes at Heathrow Qantas desk. This was new to me as I had done this journey twice before I know procedures change but someone more helpful would have been nice especially when I met 2 other people on the same flight who had received their onward boarding passes. When my flight was then delayed by 50 minutes I was getting worried especially as not one person at Heathrow could help. Arrived at Manchester at 4 pm and only just made my flight from Heathrow at 11 pm!