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Having not used MAN for several years, I can see why it has a bad reputation.
Travelling on an early evening flight today on Swiss Airlines in business, I figured I did not need to book a holiday from work. I could work from home in the morning and from the airline-contracted lounge in the afternoon. This has never been a problem at Heathrow and many other airports.
I know third-party lounges often have time limits but this does not usually apply when accessing by virtue of a business- or first-class ticket in my experience.
Here at Manchester, the lounge is not the issue; you are not even allowed through security to get to the lounge until three hours before departure, a policy I have not come across before and which was not communicated by Swiss in advance.
There are hardly any seats before security and they are all taken. I have watched dozens of other passengers being turned away at security for being too early in the past hour, so it’s seems the communication of the policy is poor.
The staff here insist the same policy exists at all airports globally. When I cited an airport last week that had no problem letting me through security early, they implied I was making it up. Worst still, the policy is being enforced by the most passive aggressive staff you could imagine, with not one iota of empathy. They seem to be quite enjoying turning people away.
Welcome to MAN, where the rules are decided on a daily basis.
Was this T2? In March I was thrown out of the FT queue because my Virgin UC BP said “Sky Priority” and not “Business Class”.
Yes, T2.
They says it’s for health and safety to stop too many people arriving early. But that only works if you tell people in advance. Having people milling around the security entrance for an hour or more doesn’t help anyone.
Manchester is an outstation rather than a hub airport for Swiss, much as, for example, Venice is for BA. In my experience, outstation airports rarely open check-in more than 2 to 2.5 hours before the flight departs, so I, perhaps natively, wouldn’t have expected any different from Swiss in Manchester.
Check-in is not the issue. That was done yesterday.
No-one is allowed through security more than three hours before their flight, even if on an airline that uses MAN as a hub.
Have had this issue at GLA before, some time ago though.
@MKB – I don’t really understand the concept that anyone can expect or feel entitled to use someone else’s premises for free for an unlimited period of time.
Airport licensing limits the number of passengers that can occupy the airport at any moment in time and airports rely on throughput to manage numbers. The restriction you encountered is entirely correct and normal, even if it doesn’t suit your requirements.
@MKB – I don’t really understand the concept that anyone can expect or feel entitled to use someone else’s premises for free for an unlimited period of time.
Airport licensing limits the number of passengers that can occupy the airport at any moment in time and airports rely on throughput to manage numbers. The restriction you encountered is entirely correct and normal, even if it doesn’t suit your requirements.
Yep, it’s really obvious that the OP was in the wrong, isn’t it?
Except this is what Virgin say on their Manchester airport guide:
“Leave those last-minute airport dashes to the big screen! We recommend that you arrive at least three to four hours before your flight is due to leave as Manchester Airport is undergoing some transformational work which could impact your customer journey”So all those happy families heading off to Orlando, following Virgin’s common sense advice, turn up 4 hours early and then spend the next hour blocking access to the security area.
@MKB – I don’t really understand the concept that anyone can expect or feel entitled to use someone else’s premises for free for an unlimited period of time.
Airport licensing limits the number of passengers that can occupy the airport at any moment in time and airports rely on throughput to manage numbers. The restriction you encountered is entirely correct and normal, even if it doesn’t suit your requirements.
It’s rather silly to equate arriving four hours before a flight with “an unlimited period of time”.
If you are travelling a short distance to an airport, it might be sensible to arrive just a couple of hours before flight departure. But if you are relying on long-distance trains or road transport, it would be unwise not to build in contingency for significant delays that do sometimes occur. Where that contingency turns out not to have been needed, of course you are going to arrive more than three hours early.
If an airport is seriously saying you can’t arrive more than three hours before departure, then:
– they need to communicate this to passengers; and
– passengers missing their flights as a result of no longer being able to build in contingency time, need to be accommodated on later flights at no extra cost.If I’d been informed of this policy, I could have taken the train an hour later, but that would not have been ideal. It would take only two cancellations to cause a missed flight with no scope at that point to take a taxi instead. (Such train problems are all too common on the West Coast Mainline.)
It’s not unreasonable, if a passenger has bought a “business class” product, that they might actually be allowed to work while waiting for their flight.
Totally agree you have to build in contingency as the trains are utterly unreliable and road traffic often grinds to a halt at peak periods. Plus there are factors such as if parking off-site you don’t know exactly when the next shuttle to the terminals will arrive or how busy it will be.
Plus delays and cancellations must mean that airports have to build in some capacity for extra pax.
Anyway, all this is why we tend to stay at an airport hotel the night before any flight departing before noon!
@MKB – it’s quite common for short haul flights from outstations not to be allowed to check in more than two hours beforehand and restrictions on how early/late you can check in are usually quite widely published. Did you check?
You refer to the fact that you have bought a ”business class” ticket, but you have bought that from the airline. You haven’t paid or contracted with the airport to occupy the airport airside facilities for an extra amount of time because you are travelling in business.
Your original, specific issue was complaining about not being allowed through security early rather than allowing contingency to arrive at the airport in good time which is a different proposition.
A number of UK airports operate at or close to capacity and while it’s not going to hurt to have a single passenger going through early, if too many did it would be chaotic. I am sure you have seen the scenes of chaos caused by relatively small disruption affecting passenger throughput.
Airport (as opposed to online) check-in times are only really an issue if you need hold baggage, which I think isn’t an issue for the OP. Obviously with HBO you can just head straight to security. T2 is still a building site atm, there’s not really anywhere practical to settle down to work landside.
Airport (as opposed to online) check-in times are only really an issue if you need hold baggage, which I think isn’t an issue for the OP. Obviously with HBO you can just head straight to security. T2 is still a building site atm, there’s not really anywhere practical to settle down to work landside.
Here, the OP’s issue was that they weren’t allowed, HBO, to go through security more than three hours prior to their flight.
Check-in times are indeed a separate issue but also indicate the operational need for airports to manage passenger and baggage throughput.
On top of that, I don’t think it’s reasonable for the OP (or anyone) simply to assume or consider themselves entitled to use some company’s premises as their ‘WFH’ office for an unlimited period of time and for free because they have a business class ticket.
Airport (as opposed to online) check-in times are only really an issue if you need hold baggage, which I think isn’t an issue for the OP. Obviously with HBO you can just head straight to security. T2 is still a building site atm, there’s not really anywhere practical to settle down to work landside.
Maybe the bigger issue is that an afternoon at the airport is going to be considered a half day of work at all!
Airport (as opposed to online) check-in times are only really an issue if you need hold baggage, which I think isn’t an issue for the OP. Obviously with HBO you can just head straight to security. T2 is still a building site atm, there’s not really anywhere practical to settle down to work landside.
Maybe the bigger issue is that an afternoon at the airport is going to be considered a half day of work at all!
My time working from the airport was only ever going to be three hours, but turned out to be two, so never a half-day. I’m not sure why you feel the need to impugn my ability to work effectively remotely.
I think part of the issue here is that, at least as far as I can see, nowhere on the Manchester Airport website does it highlight this restriction.
When I lived in Berlin I’m sure BER had a blanket policy of boarding passes only working working at the security gates from 3 hours before the flight (at least for SH flights, I never flew LH from there). I was once booked on the first BA flight of the day to LCY at 06:55 in CE but whilst en route to the airport my flight was cancelled and I only found out when I surfaced from the U-Bahn in Rudow to get the connecting bus to the terminal. I was rebooked two flights later, I couldn’t get onto the next flight as it was full. I was travelling HBO and when my boarding pass didn’t work at security the staff told me it was programmed to only work at T-3 hours, so I had to wait landside for another couple of hours.
There are some properly objectionable folk on here. @MKB you have my sympathies and thanks for bringing this to people’s attention. A few months ago I had a flight and booked a longer connection (funnily enough at ZRH) so I could file a couple of time-sensitive reports from the lounge rather than me having to sub-contract that out at a cost to myself. No one at Swiss or the airport authority batted an eyelid at my flagrant abuse of their hospitality.
Similarly I had two separate tickets last year that left me with a 5hr or so layover in BKK. Neither transit security nor the lounge had any issue with me availing myself of the airport facilities for several hours longer than was absolutely necessary.
My experience of outstation airports is that physical check-in and baggage drop opens about 2-3hrs before take-off for short haul. It would never have occurred to me that security would open earlier than that, but I can see why @MKB would have jumped to a different conclusion.
The airport is open 24×7. No-one would reasonably expect to be allowed through security 24 hours before a flight, but everyone would expect to be admitted 90 minutes before a flight. Somewhere in-between is a reasonable cut-off, but we would all make different guesses about what ‘reasonable’ means.
So, perhaps, we can all agree that the big problem with Manchester’s policy is that it isn’t published. The website simply and misleadingly says, “As a general guide, you will need to have checked in and be ready to go through security at least 2 hours before your flight departure time.” No maximum time is stated. That’s important information, and it’s extraordinary that it’s either not published or it’s published in a place where Google can’t find it.
If you were familiar with MAN, you wouldn’t find it extraordinary.
I still hold that you could be told something different by another staff member or on a different day!
OP. You are an idiot. You bought a ticket from the airline. You should not expect any service from the departing airport. What has Swiss to do with Manchester at all to start with. They are not even in the same country. Brexit means brexit. What I say is always right. You all have it wrong and it is just so simple I don’t get why people even come here to ask questions.
Next time just jump from the parking to the plane without even setting foot at the airport. What sort of leech are you to want to use their electricity, water … god forbid you go to their WC and steal the toilet paper. The duty free shops and restaurants are just there for you to wish you had more time to browse their stuff, not for you to actually buy anything.
If this policy unique to MAN is only known to the guys manning the security post it is your fault for not having connected telepathically with them and asked the question in advance.
Regardless of what you did or did not do you are in the wrong because I say so!
The airport is open 24/7 but security isn’t.
Somebody has done a super data visualisation of security waiting times at T2 over the last 3 years. They’ve really improved since 2022. https://gavsto.com/random-project-visualizing-patterns-for-wait-times-at-manchester-airport
Regardless of what you did or did not do you are in the wrong because I say so!
🤣🤣
Lucky you flying from Manchester! We do quite often and always meet with petty rules, obnoxious staff and a p*** poor experience nine times out of ten. Meet and greet are “usually “ alright and jolly. Once inside that building though you’re in for it. Some checkins remind me of prison reception ( I was not an inmate but visiting professionally!!!). Lounge staff can be bullies and security staff seem to have no positive personality traits at all ( or manners!).
Lesson learned I’m afraid. We just time the arrival correctly, brace ourselves for the service experience and get the hell out of there!!!!!!!!The airport is open 24/7 but security isn’t.
Somebody has done a super data visualisation of security waiting times at T2 over the last 3 years. They’ve really improved since 2022. https://gavsto.com/random-project-visualizing-patterns-for-wait-times-at-manchester-airport
Interesting that MAN no longer display the wait time on their website. I mentioned this last week
None of that data visualisation is really news or exciting. Post pandemic they had major staffing issues, now the posts have been filled.
Pointing out that wait times are lower in the middle of the day on a weekend or at night when fewer flights depart really isn’t surprising.
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