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What I found at aether, Manchester Airport’s private terminal

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I was in Manchester on Wednesday night for a preview of aether, the private terminal at the airport. Previously known as PremiAir, it is reopening in November after a four year hiatus.

If you’ve never heard of PremiAir, have a read at our article here when the reopening was first announced.

We were asked not to take photographs because the interiors are still being tweaked, but here is the exterior, complete with torrential rain and the new aether signage:

aether private terminal manchester airport

Here’s some additional news I gleaned:

  • there was some discussion in our comments about remote stands. aether has got this sorted. You will be driven from the private terminal to the main terminal, where a gate agent will re-check your passport. You will NOT be shepherded onto the bus with other passengers. Instead, your aether agent will take you back down to the tarmac where you will jump back into your BMW and be driven directly to the steps of your parked aircraft.
  • whilst aether can seat 60 people, it plans to have no more than 12 in the terminal at any one time. It would only exceed this if there were groups who were happy to share a car to the aircraft. Unlike, say, the First Class Terminal in Frankfurt, you will not share a car at aether with anyone who is not in your party. Passport control and security will also not be shared – only one family group will be allowed into the secure areas at a time.
  • there are no age restrictions. Children are welcome, high chairs and car seats are available and kid-friendly food can be rustled up.
  • number plate recognition cameras are being installed at the front entrance. If you arriving at aether in your own vehicle, the gates will open automatically when you arrive. Taxis etc will need to buzz reception to be allowed in.
  • you can book a private suite – by having part of the lounge fully partioned off for you – for an extra £50 per person, with a minimum charge of £250. It is possible to enter via a side entrance if your fame means that you want to avoid being mobbed in reception.
  • aether is full accessible. If necessary, the special assistance team from the terminal will come over in an adapted vehicle to drive you to your aircraft.
  • whilst the opening date is officially 4th November, this is the long-stop date driven by the installation of the new ‘liquids in’ security scanner. It is possible that it may open earlier if the work is completed quicker.

I have to say that it was lovely to be back in Manchester’s private terminal and to see the team again. There will be a formal media event nearer to opening so we will be back for that.

You can find out more on the aether website here. You can click ‘Join Waitlist’ to register for updates.

Further information is in our article from February here. Aether pricing starts at £90.

And in Bristol …..

As we’ve covered on HfP before, CAVU (the lounge operator owned by Manchester Airports Group, and which runs aether) recently took over the two lounges at Bristol Airport.

The premium lounge, previously Aspire Plus and rebranded as 1903, recently closed.

The good news is that plans are in place for major changes at Bristol, with new spaces due to increase capacity by more than 50%. I don’t want to say any more at this point but it sounds very promising and will happen sooner rather than later.

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Category

General

Comments (64)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Safety Card says:
    25 May25 May 05:46

    Good to hear about Bristol. Those lounges haven’t been fit for purpose for some time

  • Charlie says:
    25 May25 May 06:12

    If anybody at aether wants to pay my consultant fee for advice on a rebrand, I’ll quite happily reduce it to a multiple of only a few ten thousand, and tentatively suggest ‘PremiAir’.

    • The Savage Squirrel says:
      25 May25 May 07:15

      Heh, yes 100% this. At the moment they sound like some weird city-centre bar doing oxygen and jugs of cocktails.

    • TGLoyalty says:
      25 May25 May 10:33

      Must be trademark related. There is already an aviation related companies called PremiAir in operation including parking at EDI. Perhaps it was too confusing or they complained it was confusing.

    • Andrew says:
      25 May25 May 11:17

      Prem-I-Air is value brand of fans, heaters and air-conditioners.

  • Andrew J says:
    25 May25 May 06:46

    Not sure where the ‘from £20’ comes from – according to their website, prices start from £90 (and even in your 2019 article it started from £50).

  • Just Nick says:
    25 May25 May 06:48

    How do you get there if you arrive to the airport by train?

  • BJ says:
    25 May25 May 06:51

    Lately, HfP article titles seem to have developed a very severe case of parenthesessistisis. I hope the prognosis is good and they get well soon 🙂

  • Michael C says:
    25 May25 May 07:40

    So…my trip through BRS 3 weeks ago:

    My cunning plan of us going by train was scuppered by the strikes.
    Cunning plan B of using multi-storey (walkable) airport car park was scuppered by it being closed.
    The “Silver” car park has such nightmare reviews (especially about bus shuttles not working) that we used a JustPark, which was great: 8 mins walk along a country lane to the back of the Hampton Inn. (It’s the space that says “bring a torch if walking at night”!)
    Lounge: we were very pressed for time, so really just wanted a drink + grab item for our son. Dragon said “if you don’t have a booking, you can scan the QR code, but you can’t come in until 2 hours before your flight. And the waitlist is 2-3 hours”. When I pointed out that that meant I’d have to arrive 5 hours early, she just glared at me. The thing was, you could clearly see (open-plan) that the lounge was not bust AT ALL. Did ask could we literally grab a sparkling water for child, but computer said no.
    EZY then started flashing “last call” 40 mins before flight due to leave, and on double-checking, boarding passes said no access after 30 mins to go…The gate was a VERY long way: the very last one in the whole airport. We made it sweating but there were many babies/OAPs sweating and hobbling on the way. Once into the departure area, boarding time came and went. Then an announcement: “The crew are stuck in their cars. The traffic is terrible today because it’s Bank Holiday weekend”. We know. That’s why we all left home 2 hours earlier.
    Of course, departure area doesn’t have a toilet, let alone a water fountain. More to the point (for me, at the time), it’s so far away that it’s not covered by the airport wifi, and doesn’t even have phone coverage!
    By then there was a sufficient number of hot dehydrated cross-legged kids that they had to start letting people back into the terminal, with the proviso “…but you could be called at any time, and it’s not our fault if you miss the flight”.
    If we had missed it, the next one was 4 days later (IOM): the last time this happened to some relatives, they were handed a note saying “please make your own way to Gatwick Airport for an alternative flight”.

    Next week readers will be enthralled to read about the return leg IOM-BHX with Loganair on a BA code share: cancelled 5pm the day before the flight, with Loganair saying “We can’t change your ticket, as it’s from BA” and BA saying “Don’t worry, we’ve just checked on our system, and it HASN’T been cancelled”

  • Alex says:
    25 May25 May 07:57

    PremiAir really was fine

  • Tom says:
    25 May25 May 08:08

    Are people really that weirded out by sharing a car with another person?

    • (Other) Tom says:
      25 May25 May 08:18

      If you are willing to pay to avoid sharing a bus with others it stands to reason you might also prefer a car to yourself.

      • Bagoly says:
        25 May25 May 10:00

        It’s actually quite an interesting point to understand motivations:
        I guess some people do want the complete privacy – is that only those who have a public profile (understandable) or do people beyond that want it too?
        My approach is that I want to avoid the masses, but I’m happy to be part of a smaller, and hopefully more reliably behaved, group.
        While other people want to be “above” the majority.

        The desire of many single travellers not to be crammed in with kids seems not so relevant – any group with kids would usually fill a car anyway.
        And it’s only for a few minutes.

        Perhaps they thought about those people with public profiles who have understandable desire for privacy, and concluded that if they had to allocate people to private or not there was too much risk of giving offence.
        Solution would have been to charge extra for it.

        • Rob says:
          25 May25 May 10:03

          In reality, if there are 2 single travellers heading to the same aircraft and they are tight on cars then I’m sure no-one would mind sharing if asked.

          For two couples, though, it means 3 people squeezed in the back which doesn’t exactly shout premium.

          • Novice says:
            25 May25 May 11:33

            I personally wouldn’t mind sharing with just one other person but the fact that they state I won’t need to ever share will then piss me off if someone was asked to join me because in my opinion I have paid for the service which is a car to myself.

            I think they should have a rule where they say that if 2 individuals need to share the car then somehow they will refund a bit of the cost otherwise anyone like me would be complaining based on principle.

          • John says:
            25 May25 May 12:52

            Well it would come down to, do you want to wait while the other person gets driven to the plane first (if they were willing to share and you aren’t, they should get to go before you)

    • NicktheGreek says:
      25 May25 May 09:48

      If it’s part of the upsell for a special trip then a shared car takes the sheen off. Also means in the case of a remote stand you’re not at the mercy of your other unintended traveling parties boarding pass issues etc which may mean waiting around whilst it’s sorted and so on.

    • ChrisBCN says:
      25 May25 May 11:19

      Depends how handsy the other person is (or isnt)

      • Blair Waldorf Salad says:
        25 May25 May 13:44

        “We were bundled into the back of an aether car together. And that’s how I met your mother”

        • Novice says:
          26 May26 May 00:09

          John, I would still complain because it’s not my problem they don’t have enough cars. I am not paying them to then tell me to wait when they are taking someone else to the same or another plane before me simply because I argue that their own terms of service state that I would be driven in an individual car.

          I already said that I personally don’t care about sharing. I am pointing out that if they anticipate that might not have enough cars then they shouldn’t be stating that we will never share.

          It’s like assuming solo travellers would just agree to share when asked. But that’s not the service they are selling:

          • Catalan says:
            26 May26 May 09:01

            …And then once onboard you discover you’re sat right next to the person you just complained about sharing a car with….

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