British Airways lounge at Manchester Airport will not re-open – report

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• barnaby100 says:

  13 Mar13 March 08:57

  The toilets were really nice, much better than any at LHR and very superior to the supermarket style loos in the Concorde Room.

  • Anna says:

    13 Mar13 March 09:06

    Indeed, the scent of Elemis hand wash and cream is indelibly associated with holidays for me now!

  • Happy Tim says:

    13 Mar13 March 09:26

    Indeed the toilets were the best part of the lounge.

    In fact, those toilets were the best part of the whole terminal!

    • Lady London says:

      13 Mar13 March 09:35

      It comes to something when you’re choosing which airline to fly with based on its toilets.

      Don’t KL and AF give access to the 1903 lounge? Sounds like I’ll be flying with them instead if another contract comes up for me in MAN.

      • Peggerz says:

        13 Mar13 March 11:35

        Ah, the 1903 Lounge. My favourite paid lounge experience in the UK so far. Connecting at MAN en route to EDI. It was recommended many years ago in HfP comments. It was ‘reassuringly expensive’ compared to the opposition.

      • David D says:

        13 Mar13 March 12:17

        Copied from the KLM lounge directory for MAN.

        “Location
        Terminal 3 Departures Upper level. AF KL passengers are eligible to use the 1903 lounge, however, passengers traveling with children under 18 must use the Escape Lounge.
        Opening Hours 04:15-20:30”

• Chris P says:

  13 Mar13 March 09:03

  How sad – I’ve spent many a happy hour there & it was my first ever lounge! I feel sorry for all the lovely staff also.

• Martin says:

  13 Mar13 March 09:12

  A great shame, first used it back in the mid 90’s and although it has essentially stood still since then it did not matter – always a most pleasant start to a journey with good food (bacon rolls were a regular morning feature in my experience), drink and views with plenty of space. Far better than the Heathrow lounges IMHO. Hopefully this is not yet another sign of BA abandoning all but the South East, and something equally palatable will emerge

  • Lady London says:

    13 Mar13 March 09:39

    ‘Something equally palatable will emerge’ is KLM or AF or other airlines that provide the 1903 lounge…. am itching to find a reason to visit

• Doug M says:

  13 Mar13 March 09:49

  That was a nice lounge, used it a couple of times. But nothing could repair the damage done by the surly, difficult and largely incompetent security experience. Quite why MAG wouldn’t want to address that was beyond me.

  • Sean Crannigan says:

    13 Mar13 March 10:07

    Absolutely right. The security staff there are beneath contempt.

  • Anna says:

    13 Mar13 March 10:45

    They’re just awful – yet the staff at LHR mostly seem to be an extremely friendly bunch even though it’s a massively bigger operation! Once I forgot I had a BA amenity bag in my hand luggage after a long overnight flight and when it came out of the scanner I was convinced I was going to get a brutal public dressing down like I’ve seen people get at MAN but the guy just said, “Oh I can see what this is, I’ll just put it in a plastic bag for you and pop it through the scanner again”. All with a smile!

• TimM says:

  13 Mar13 March 10:02

  Agreed, the T3 BA lounge is the best part of the entire airport. It was somewhere you could recover your humanity after the degrading trauma of Manchester Airport security.

  I am already looking into alternatives to my forthcoming CE bookings. Without a lounge at Manchester, is it really worth all those points which can now be spent at Sainsbury’s and Argos?

• Paul says:

  13 Mar13 March 10:31

  Great lounge lousy terminal. The BA lounge made T3 bearable it was roomy and always had plenty of free seating unlike LHR. When T3 was first built and was only largely BA and affiliates it was a pleasant small terminal. Once the other airlines were crowbarred in it became overcrowded with not enough facilities to service the extra travellers. And don’t get me started on the security.

• TimM says:

  13 Mar13 March 10:42

  I remember when he current pier of Manchester T3 was the ‘domestic’ pier of the one and only terminal. What is now a shopping mall of T1 (with the compulsory duty free maze) was the lounge for both domestic (left) and international (right) piers. After security (international flights only) there was one shop, the duty free shop, which was as sparse and bare as any Eastern European supermarket. The airlines I flew on in those days were BEA, Dan-Air, British Caledonian and Britannia.

  How Manchester Airport grew into the monstrosity it is in every way today, I can only imagine it is decades of intentional punishment of travellers by those who would rather be running concentration camps.

  You can be assured that the BA lounge will not improve under new management. It is not MAG’s style to improve things.

  • Cheshire Pete says:

    13 Mar13 March 11:01

    You should try PremiAir then. MAG have definitely got that right!

• Nick says:

  13 Mar13 March 11:07

  Will BA be moving to T2 though? I’ve seen nothing to suggest it will have domestic facilities. Could be wrong of course.

  I also liked the MAN lounge. Isn’t massively dated, and there was always somewhere to sit near the window with fantastic runway views.

  I won’t miss for one second the evil witch who worked there though. I’m sure we all know who I mean. Every single staff member was lovely apart from one BS lady who acted as if every drink, scone, whatever, came out of her personal wages and didn’t care in the slightest about actual customer service.

  What’s also missing in any third-party operation is the BA duty staff. The MAN lounge reception could handle flight queries and basic ticketing, which is invaluable at times. If they pay for a contract lounge instead the this disappears instantly, which is almost as big a hit as the lounge itself.

  • Lord Doncaster says:

    13 Mar13 March 18:25

    I’m curious who the witch was 😂

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