My only experience with the Manchester airport was passing through on my way to Singapore. Folks there were relatively nice, but I didn’t have to collect baggage, only go through a form of immigration, then back onto the plane. Being in business class and one of the first ones in the immigration queue helps quite a bit, I’d imagine.
These days they have automated passport readers, so immigration is a breeze…at Manchester. Haven’t done Heathrow in a while, so I don’t know how that place is faring.
Good for you. I was business class to Frankfurt, and the passport line was impossibly long.
I’m sure it depends on the airport and time of day. Also, at Manchester it wasn’t normal immigration for entering the country, only continuing passengers. You have to exit the plane, go through immigration and security, then back on the plane. The immigration is just for those passengers on continuing flights, and if yours is the only one arriving at the moment, it’s not too bad. I’ve waited for hours at immigration at some airports, and class of service doesn’t enter into the equation. Canada has been the worst of my experience, but there’s a whole story about my “immigration” to Canada for 48 hours.
Just saying bring first off the plane did not help a bit.
Well, it was probably better than being the last one off.
I have a day to kill in Manchester, so I googled “things to do in Manchester” and the top hits were all (paraphrasing) “go somewhere else”.
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Manchester is an entire city comprising of south London.
I was once in a similar circumstance while in Manchester. I drove to Liverpool.
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Actually, that sounds pretty good to me.
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There are recommendations of things to do in London. And then there’s this.
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SWA is in full-blown meltdown. But much like government, we get the airline industry we deserve.
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Ray, it has been an utter shit-show the past several days. I’m supposed to commute to work this afternoon and start my trip tomorrow, but not holding my breath for things to go uneventfully.
We’ve had emails from HQ about how they’ve decided to “realign’ the operation and get things going, amounting to flying a minimum schedule at 1/3 our volume, then “reset” things tomorrow. That sounds to me like they gave up and are buried so fucking deep. We have crews and airplanes out of place and have stranded and inconvenienced thousands of people (including my 84 yo mother in NorCal) at a challenging time of the year. It’s. A. Mess.
I have heard from several coworkers/friends the past few days of how things are messed up like a lab rat, and I’m so glad to not have been in the mix of it. I got lucky this time, but have been in the muck before. There are crews not being able to get though to Crew Scheduling for literally hours, not enough ramp personnel available to marshal planes so planes are holding out on the ramp for hours, crews unable to get hotel rooms, and on and on.
The sad part is, while this storm has hampered things for many U.S. Airlines, we seem to be unable to weather things during irregular operations which worries me deeply. We’ve had 3 system meltdowns in my 6 yrs at SWA, and this is by far the worst. It’s fucking embarrassing.
Some changes need to be here at Uncle Herb’s airline, otherwise, we’re properly fucked.
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Sorry to hear it’s such a mess. I hope things get turned around.
Good luck man, sorry you’re stuck dealing with that.
Hang in there, John. I hope things turn around. If you find yourself thirsty in Austin, you have my number.
Don’t mean to speak for anyone at SWA, and you’re certainly face down in the muck, but from what I read SWA’s problems are just the other side of the coin why people love them: short, cheap flights, free bags, quick turnarounds, let’s get on the plane and GTFO. Not much contingency built in. Which is fine when things are cruising along, but throw you guys a wrinkle and all hell breaks loose. Is that anyway accurate?
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That sounds like just about everything these days. Stripped to the bone workforces and “just in time” supply chains mean that what should be molehills turn into mountains.
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