For those of you who find ranting and complaining pointless, especially if it benefits no one, I suggest you ignore this particular post, for I plan to use this space to lay hatred upon Manchester Airport, resulting in an absolute lack of productive or useful solutions.
We arrived at Manchester Airport at 1:30 for our 4:00 flight to Cologne after an hour train ride from Sheffield. Check in and security went smoothly, but alas, once we arrived within the belly of the beast, the flight board did not direct us to a gate.
1. At Manchester Airport passengers are not told their gate number until 5 minutes before their flight begins to board. I can only assume this is to cut down on any person-to-person contact between passengers and airport and airline staff.
We could not yet venture to a gate and instead settled down close to a flight board and anxiously awaited direction. Many flights were canceled and their passengers swept away to hotels or Leeds to board other flights. As the clock ticked dangerously close to the departure time, our flight on the board finally sparked with activity. Betraying our naive trust, it told us we would have more information about our flight in 20 minutes.
2. The flight board at Manchester Airport lies. It says information is coming in 20 minutes. This time is constantly added upon until an indiscernible number of hours has passed and you are still sitting next to a Starbucks waiting for a gate number.
Around 8:00 we become worried. We have no gate from which to procure information. Instead we found the customer service counter.
3. The customer service counter at Manchester Airport is tiny and useless. There were three people behind it and 150 people in front of it. It is the only remaining example of an unsuccessful queue in all of Britain.
The woman at the counter told me they did not have any information concerning German Wings, our carrier, and I should try to use the free phones to call German Wings’ office within the airport.
4. The customer service phones provided by Manchester Airport are just another blockade provided by the airport to separate the passengers from actual human beings. No one actually answers the phones, but angry passengers queue to use them regardless.
We sat in our airport purgatory, bitterly listening to announcements made for other flights. Finally we are told that a German Wings representative is coming to Gate 21. Around this time the flight board announces that our flight is delayed until 8:00…A.M. the next day! As there is no actual person to confirm this, we wait in complete uncertainty.
5. Gate 21 is not an actual gate, but a counter within the gateless passenger holding area. Although it is numbered “21” gates 20 and 22 are nowhere to be found, as the order of this particular gate is illogical at best.
After about two more hours of standing around with our German Wings comrades (which included an aging rocker couple from a past decade and an old man with an exquisite waistcoat), an airport employee showed up with a sign which read, “German Wings, follow me.”
6. Manchester Airport uses their employees to hold hand written signs on the backs of cardboard boxes in order to direct large groups of passengers while continuing to withhold vital information.
As the silent, bright-orange vest-wearing man ushered us through a hallway and into a gate, it remained unclear if we were boarding a plane, getting on a bus, going to another airport, going to a hotel; it was the blind leading the blind (with a cardboard box). We were actually lead out of the airport and back in again as if we were arriving passengers.
7. At Manchester Airport, even if you do not board a plane and are marched in circles, you are forced to enter border patrol and show your passport, even though you NEVER LEFT THE COUNTRY OR THE AIRPORT.
After making sure we were safe to “re-enter” England, we were steered to baggage claim on the other side of the airport.
8. The physical layout of Manchester Airport makes absolutely no logical sense to most sane people. It took the brainpower of three adults to guide us through the matrix of confusion to baggage claim.
We continued to wait seemingly forever for our luggage. Mine has been broken, the handle ripped off. Kevin’s appears to have been run over by a small vehicle.
9. After 7 hours in an airport holding facility, luggage at Manchester Airport can be broken even if said luggage was never transferred onto a plane.
We finally speak to someone who tells us we need to head back to the arrival counter where we had checked in hours earlier.
10. After a flight containing 150 passengers is canceled, German Wings opened only one counter, manned by only one staff member who alone handled the very long line of confused passengers. (This is more a complaint against German Wings, but it colored my experience at the airport as well).
After waiting another couple hours we reach the sole employee who informed us that we should return at 6:00 in the morning, gave us an address to mail our receipts to, and told us to get a hotel, eat dinner, eat breakfast, and we shall be reimbursed by German Wings. Thus redeeming German Wings, (but not Manchester Airport).
We thankfully find an apartment-hotel in the center of Manchester and an authentic Italian restaurant, both of which perk up the start of our holiday.
Broken little red suitcase in hand, a hand being constantly stabbed by the protruding pieces of metal and plastic from said broken suitcase, we arrived bright and early (although not so bright, as it is England) at Manchester Airport, only to discover that our flight has been delayed an undisclosed number of hours. As we finally push off and fly higher into the sky, we are glad that Manchester Airport is behind us and are ready to start our happy holiday.
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