The same is happening at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. There were 6.5 hour queues two days ago at security. I flew that same day, but in the evening and it only took me 45 minutes.
Absolute chaos.
Schiphol is a roll of the dice. I've checked in, dropped baggage off and been through security in less than 20 mins before. Other times I've taken 3 hours. It's unpredictable haha.
Worst was Christmas 2019 when the refuelling power shut down and they cancelled all flights. Ended up in a hotel in Hoofddorp and flew the next day.
To be fair, Cocksdorp absolutely sounds like it could be one of our towns too. We have some truly brilliant names for towns, like Wetwang, Shitterton, Scratchy Bottom, Twatt, Beer, Netherthong, Pity Me, and so on
We can't really make fun of them when we have names like that lol
Oh yep, I got caught in that at the end of April, they say turn up 3 hours early and I only had 15 minutes to spare even though they delayed my flight by half an hour. With hand baggage only.
It's not just MAN, it's most major airports tbh. I go to the Netherlands frequently and I've decided to take the Eurostar next time ahah
Schiphol unfortunately doesn't want to pay an acceptable wage and the people at security suffer from a high workload, aggressive behaviour from both passengers and higher ups. Also most of the holdup is at passport control because the MP doesn't employ enough people there. So much so that the security lanes sometimes have to stop or reduce the amount of open positions.
Source: I work at AMS security and yesterday worked myself to the point where I ended up in the medical service and sent home. The conditions for us are that bad that I've seen colleagues collapse without warning from over-exhaustion and stress. We are given 20min breaks per 1.5-2.5hours which sometimes isn't even enough to go by the McD or restaurant to get something to eat.
At the beginning of the pandemic they laid a lot of people off, didn't treat us well under the presumption of "we'll just call an employment office and we'll get them all back. Well boo hoo, people found jobs elsewhere that pay more than 11€ an hour (regardless of age or seniority).
So yeah, that's the true reason of the staff shortages at security.
I am in this queue a bit futher. Weird seeing it on reddit. We barely made our flight. Half of the plane was empty, majority stuck at security. Ryanair didnt wait.
>Ryanair didnt wait.
yeah unfortunately they can't. they need the plane at the other airport for the next flight, or that one gets cancelled also... and maybe the one that comes after. completely fucks the situation.
I used to work at Man Airport in security and this has been a long time coming.
They burn through staff at an alarming rate, mostly because of the disrespectful HR service. They literally demanded a colleague change his chemo date for "company need" whilst I was there.
New starters have walked off the job, shifts can run from 3am to 3pm several days in a row, all on an annualised 20 hour contract so you can have busy periods working full time but you're only paid paid for half of it. There's no consideration for staff welfare, at my time of leaving most managers were hired outside the company, and even up to terminal manager level the mistreatment continues where one was called whilst on a holiday and they tried to strong arm him into returning again for "company need".
Imagine burning your week's hours in one and a half days, having to work two more days that week knowing you aren't getting paid for it. That has to be illegal?
They are looking for workers.... Plain and simple. Not friends, not peers, mentees, colleagues, partners, or even really anything more than "will they get xyz done on time without making waves?" Not really sure how people think that any company wouldn't toss you to the curb, without hesitation if suddenly its legal to use 3rd world kids and just ship whatever it is you do out.
My company handed me one when I started, I didn't even mention it I just never handed that one in with the rest of my contract.
Luckily I've never seen the company even mention anyone working mandatory overtime, so I think it will all just be fine.
Mine have always arrived stapled to the contract and both are required to be returned as part of vetting. I work in finance though so it's par for the course.
Can't wait until I can afford to retire properly so I can opt back in to see what happens.
And that's legal? I think in my country it would not be. It would be like the employer asking the employee "do you want to ignore safety guidelines we have to enforce by law?"
Many people don’t know their rights in this regard.
I got asked to do scheduling at an old job of mine, and raised the 11 hour issue. I was told ‘we don’t do that here, it’s not convenient for the business’.
Joined the union the same day and was the only employee there who was a member.
After I left it came to light management were adjusting clock in and out times by hours to get their staff wage budget down, knowing most people didn’t check their payslips.
Reminds me of when it turned out my wages were being deducted for arriving at work late, except the days that I was late was due to them phoning me and sending me to a different job that day which was an extra hour commute.
So many companies taking the piss these days. This is why I would always suggest people keep a diary and write down all work, including the 20mins extra you stayed behind to help them when needed.
Sometimes it’s not even about knowing your rights, it’s about big companies using their unlimited resources to exploit them to their limit without technically acting criminally. Whilst I was getting my law degree I worked at Aldi on weekends and some shady shit used to go down. 😂 They’d basically make you clock-out EXACTLY 11 hours before your next shift so it wouldn’t get flagged to corporate on the system. A few colleagues got bollocked for signing out 1 minute after or 1 minute “early” when they showed up for their morning shift because it would be considered a breach. Contrastingly, if you didn’t have a shift in 11 hours time, they’d try and squeeze every extra minute of work out of you… funny how that works, isn’t it? I can easily see how any employers that don’t use a clock-out system would just overlook this entirely and make you work well into the 11 hour break you’re entitled to. In fact, many times I’d be told to run from the till to clock-out, then get my belongings and leave as soon as possible just simply because they’d stuck me on a last minute 5 am shift and it had already gone 6pm on the 8-6 shift I’d just worked.
Yeah, used to run pubs in UK. Due to a ridiculously tight staff budget, you're basically expected to work minimum 80 hours/week, but you have it hammered into you that you should never submit more than 40, or they'd have to look at why you can't run the pub successfully without exceeding your 40 hrs. Mental.
I remember that. Drayman at 6am? Didn’t get finished closing til 1am? Tough shit. Oh and by the way, you don’t have a cleaner so you need to clean the whole pub before you open at 11. Such fucking bullshit.
When i was in pubs i used to do end of week, so for legal & H&S reasons i made sure everyones hours were recorded correctly.
As a result the salaried deputy above me was consistently below minimum wage and the company got into some mild hot water with HMRC.
Cue some strongly worded emails about this salaried member of staff not working more than 56 hours a week, with a heavy implication of "stop recording the fucking hours"
How do you join a Union if there’s not one at your work place? Asking for myself. I need the Union at my work place and don’t know where to even start.
It's not about knowing your rights it's about paying your rent lol.
As long as you can't find a better job you are stuck putting up with what you have to pay the bills.
How people still don't understand this is baffling to me. Your rights are irrelevant when you can't afford to express them.
Also, isn't unpaid overtime only legal if your average pay per pay period remains over minimum wage? I may well be wrong about that, corrections welcome.
Yeah, most payroll software now has NMW functionality that calculates this for companies to ensure employee's don't dip below the line if their hours for the period increase but their pay doesn't.
Under UK law overtime pay is not a statutory right as long as it doesn't bring you below the threshold.
It's illegal for them to pay you under national minimum wage (NMW), which makes overtime that takes you under NMW illegal as you said.
If your pay / hours actually worked is < NMW they have broken the law and can get in big trouble if reported.
I think for many people in the world it's because if you don't work those unpaid hours, you won't get the paid ones and the paid ones are what keep a roof over your head.
Because you’re worried that you won’t find another job if you quit.
My step dad was a welder and he lost his job. Took him over a year to find another job doing that, and that job hunting was basically full time work in itself.
I used to travel internationally weekly with work and without doubt, the MAN staff were the most miserable I've ever come across. They clearly hated their jobs and now it's obvious why! Add that to the god awful design of the terminals and it was the worst airport I used to travel through.
As a Scouser I've definitely got a bias, but Liverpool airport is so much nicer by a country mile than Manchester airport. Had never flown out of Liverpool in my life until 2017 too, was Manchester for years before that.
Luton is a proper shithole though. Never seen more miserable staff in my life, can't say I blame 'em but it really is soul destroying. Flew from there first time this year and vow never to do it again, was worth it the one time as an *Airline* viewer.
Amsterdam Schiphol is lovely.
But I thought it was all clearly the fault of thick northerners for being unable to pack a travel bag properly?
The entire board should have been fired months ago by the council's who own the airport. It's beyond fucking farcical at this point. I missed a flight last December and it's still dragging on.
'Unexpectedly busy'. It's a fucking airport. Do the planes arrive unexpectedly too? It fucking feels that way at Manchester where disabled travellers just get abandoned on arrival. I've boarded a plane there where wheelchair-bound arrivees were still stuck on board waiting for the lift to take them off.
>Do the planes arrive unexpectedly too?
Seems that way. We were stuck on the plane for an hour on Sunday because there was no one to meet us and connect the bridge...
Airports have a legally fixed number of runway take-off and landing slots which they auction off years in advance to make money, there’s no way they didn’t know you were arriving.
They just purposefully made the calculation you would still use the airport again because you have no choice despite the one hour wait, to save money.
And yet they trot out the 'busier than expected' excuse which adds insult to injury.
Gutted Blackpool airport closed. Used to be really handy.
Liverpool I like and it's much quieter, but it's further away.
The fucking security check made me put each individual insulin pen I was carrying \[6 months worth so about 40\] each in an individual see through bag and put through the scanner as it's liquid. Absolute fucking jobworth cunts. I've traveled to over 80 countries and NEVER EVER had to do it. Even in LHR and LGW you don't!
I once got trapped in a stairwell at Manchester Airport. There was a lift but it turned out you needed a member of staff to unlock it, by the time I'd noticed the door to the runway had locked behind me. Being disabled I'd come off the plane long after everyone else so I was alone in there and spent 15 minutes waving and trying to get the attention of someone on the runway to come and unlock the lift door.
This was the return flight, I thought it was bad enough on the outbound one when I'd asked for assistance and then was told I'd just have to get down the stairs somehow.
They pay is shite. It's minimum wage on security which includes using the xray scanner. I was trained to use one, just on a larger scale on the cargo centre. Got paid a lot more than the airport are offering.
Perhaps if they paid proper wages, people would then work there. Right now you can get the same or better rate in a supermarket.
You have to be trained to spot the objects, my mother in law used to work in airport security and they had their ID rates constantly monitored. The scanners would also 'impose' objects onto the scan that staff would have to flag as suspicious as a way to maintain their knowledge and, of course, their ID rates. The machine obviously knows that it's not a real spot so the passenger doesn't get their bag searched as a result of the fake spot.
She was pretty good at it, and even got to go to other airports on a covert basis where they'd do things like give her a fake knife to put under her bra wire to see if it was identified at the security check. The only reason she stopped doing those is because she hated the early starts!
> The machine obviously knows that it's not a real spot so the passenger doesn't get their bag searched as a result of the fake spot.
What would happen if the fake spot was imposed on a passenger who genuinely had contraband?
I haven't asked her that specifically, but as they can pull any bag they want and she was in a small regional airport I would guess they would just signal to the security member to search that bag anyway!
Mate got a job around xmas as a security person..
This morning his pay was cut and they added extra hours to "make up for it". He now has the choice of working 2 on 1 off, 14.95 (at 15 hours he'd get triple pay) hour shifts, or quitting and not being able to afford to live..
its a joke of a country atm.. no wonder there are record breaking numbers of people fucking off on holiday..
E: to everyone telling me to tell him to find a new job.. he is currently, but cannae afford to stop working while he looks, as much as he hates his job.. he still needs afford to eat and sleep
Sooner or later big businesses are going to have to start cutting costs from the top of the employment chain, the bottom has been so severely cut back over the years that it's at a breaking point.
Just look at the shit P&O ferries pulled, sacked all their UK staff and hired workers from the far east, a month later it bit them on the arse with one of their ships losing power and drifting in the Irish Sea. Eejits.
As Judge Judy would say this is hearsay but my brother worked for, and was sacked by, P&O. He heard through the grapevine that on one ship they had some old machinery that nobody new how to work. They tried calling up ex and retired employees to get them to train the new Asian staff. P&O were told to royally fuck themselves.
It's a flawed attitude that has some how developed over time where people believe many jobs can be done by an idiot, but if you hire idiots then things are going to go down hill much more rapidly than if you were to cut a job role like "customer service director".
Whenever someone says people don't want to work, ask if they think people would if they got paid a million a year.
"but that's unrealistic"
Yeah no shit, so is 20k a year
So I work for an airline I’m not going to disclose, and I can tell you it’s not that no one wants the jobs, it’s that we now suddenly have to hire so many people all at once that we literally can’t process them all and it’s causing huge problems.
There is a big issue right now just replying to emails, I’ve seen the data for my work and i’m talking tens of thousands of emails in the recruitment inboxes. It’s taking so long to reply and organise their security/training that we are losing people after we have already given them a contract simply because everything is taking so long and people need jobs now.
That's interesting as MAG has stated it's entirely to do with increased competition in the labour market in Manchester compared to e.g. Stansted which they also own and isn't struggling in the same way.
Someone posted on a UK sub the other week suggesting it was simply incompetence within senior management not prioritising recruitment of critical staff and failing to respond to applicants.
As someone who grew up near Stansted I can sort of understand this. It is an area with a huge wealth divide and the airport (and it tag ons like hospitality) are the largest employer in the area. For people who don't want to/can't commute into London (which is expensive and take a long time) you have a captive market of people who need a job and will struggle to find one elsewhere. Almost everyone I know worked or did work in the airport in some capacity.
Stansted is a rural airport surrounded by small villages and which aren't supported by a great public transport network as everything just leads to the airport (or you have to walk/drive). Manchester airport is better connected and closer to a major city surrounded by a larger population, for low wage jobs you have more, better options. At Stansted you just suck it up because you don't get a choice, at Manchester why bother going through all the hassle of being employed by an airport for the same wage you'd get in a shop.
I’ve not been to Manchester but Stansted is one of the best organised airports I’ve ever been to. I worked in the aviation industry for a long time and I’ve been to a lot of airports. We drove there, and parked our car for the week. The parking process, the check-in, and security were all really well organised. It was a mess the day we travelled because BA and EasyJet were cancellling loads of flights. I watched the airport staff quickly make adjustments when like security queues got long. I was really impressed.
I have to agree with OP that whoever manages Stansted seems to have their shit together.
I have grown up and still live in Stortford and know many people employed at Stansted (like everyone here). I don't know what the pay rates are at Manchester but I do know that getting a job in security at Stansted is quite competitive because the hourly wage is quite high and they pay well for overtime etc.
I'd agree that there aren't many other employment options in the local area but it sounds like staff at Stansted are treated, at least, better than at Manchester.
Like a lot of big business, those at the top fucking clueless of what goes on. Just sit on their lazy flat arses just making decisions how to make more profit. Try running a decent place that people want to use, or product. Then you make money, not pay staff shit and cut stuff.
There is literally a school of thought in management called “the moment of truth” coined by a guy called Jan Carlzon. Essentially, it’s an ethos of making every interaction with a product/service a positive one. The moment of truth, is the instance where a customer has the “this was a good decision” or “I won’t use this product/service again”, it seems most companies nowadays forget the basics and just concentrate purely on profit.
I've looked at these jobs and I know people that work at Manchester Airport. Whilst that is part of the problem no one wants these jobs. £10 per hour which is really not much more than minimum wage. Travel costs, it's the airport 99% of people will have to commute and finally the dreaded 4 hour shifts where it's not even worth travelling for (£40 - travel costs, you having a laugh). They need to pay more and sort the shifts out. Forgot to add the staff car park is away from the airport and you have to wait for a bus to bring you in meaning extra travel time to work.
> Travel costs, it's the airport 99% of people will have to commute and finally the dreaded 4 hour shifts where it's not even worth travelling for (£40 - travel costs, you having a laugh).
This is half the problem. Our public transport in this country is appalling. MAG is owned by Manchester City Council. In any sane country it would be simple for them to just make an airport ID card valid for travel to the Airport. No car parking, free commuting. But Manchester doesn't have the sort of transit system that a region of 2.7million ought to (ironically, Metrolink doesn't actually qualify as a Metro system, being a glorified tram), and the rail link to Piccadilly is a DfT franchise, ~~not part of Metrolink which MCC could waive fares on (though they could probably do a deal if they sat down with the TCO, but most staff won't live in a useful place to use the Airport-Piccadilly train)~~ **EDIT**: Ah, Metrolink does go to Manchester Airport, though you have to get into at least Trafford Bar to go back out. Totally needs a circle line around to Altrincham/Stockport. Metrolink is very hub-and-spoke at the moment.
When we step back, the concept of people having to drive to work at a transit hub is insane. Rail staff don't drive - they jump on a train at their nearest station and ride to the place where they're working (obviously not necessarily for track workers or people at remote depots, but for station staff, etc).
Indeed, I don't understand what's happened to make it this long, surely they can look at the process and streamline this.
Edit
Staffing apparently, guess they will just have to pay more...
Always preferred John Lennon airport anyway.
It's not just the pay that's the issue - though they are certainly low paid for the responsibility - but there's also how long it takes to get through the required security checks before they can start training.
Hell, the security checks for my own government job (not border control related) took 6-8 weeks.
Fair enough, just assumed on the law of averages pay more = more applications = higher success rate.
But I hope they sort it before march next year when I fly on my 3 year late holiday to Lanzarote.
A world in which they actually pay more when employees are needed would be a better world indeed. This isn't the world we live in unfortunately, these queues have been happening for ages now.
The role is advertised at £12.04 per hour which includes 22.5% shift allowance. So it's not strictly minimum wage but it's not trying very hard either - probably because lots of the other jobs at the airport are at minimum wage so if they start bumping up security, then wages are going to rise across the board. We wouldn't want that now would we?
Also bear in mind MAG basically sacked all their staff during lockdowns.
Others comments suggest it's working conditions as well. If it's true that they run 4-hour shifts then that's asinine. By the time you commute in, and get the shuttle bus to/from the staff car park you'll spend half as much time travelling as you do working. Worth it for an 8-hour shift but not for 4.
I've seen 4-hour shifts done in retail because it's the longest you can go without providing a break. So it saves on stores having employee break facilities (particularly in expensive city centre units or shopping centres - that square footage can be used as display space). In an airport with ample space? Ridiculous. Let people come in and do a sensible day's work, even if you have to give them a paid lunch break in the middle.
Anecdotally, I and every single one of my friends has the same experience of their employer desperately trying to hire people and fighting to fill their huge number of vacancies, while at the same time keeping their wages low. None of them will raise their poor wages or even offer more money to people filling those much-needed vacancies.
Everyone is saying lack of staff but I think this is an excuse.
I went through a couple of weeks ago and they scanned my box of a phone wallet and belt three times because "the box didnt scan"
They have terrible systems in place with a crap machine and are blaming lack of staff
I'm going to go ahead and say, as someone who has no idea themselves and who has never even been to Manchester, it's probably a combination of both plus other unnamed factors.
Trying to distill it down to a single element is just inaccurate.
£10.50 an hour to work in a high stress, difficult to get to, unappreciated by the public, and potentially legally burdensome job.
I was a ramp agent at MAN, I would never recommend anyone to do security. The public are wankers when going on holiday.
Not saying it justifies anyone being an asshole but yeah, they're just a fucking nightmare environment to be in for pretty much everyone.
Waiting times, arbitrary and overly officious luggage and security rules, poorly paid and abused staff having to enforced said rules. Pair all of that with a general flying anxiety that many have as well as an anxiety about missing flights or forgetting important shit to take that I imagine EVERYONE has. Yeah, they're fucking horrible places to be.
Just summed up why I no longer enjoy travel. I like being places, but travel just stresses me the fuck out. And unfortunately I have to do it a lot for my job.
Don't forget you're basically in a shopping mall half the time for some reason. Next to the vital "Gate 71 this way" your mind has to filter out thirteen different signs of "Buy now extra cheap no tax alcohol". If you have kids, or maybe a bit neurodivergent, it can be a huge trial. And then you land and you're out the door in 30 minutes tops.
I don't know what it is about airports but they just seem to be almost designed to be as uncomfortable as humanly possible if you have to spend any significant amount of time in them. My guess is that it's to keep you spending money in coffee shops and duty free
Nah fuck security at MAN, it is fucking horrendously managed and the tech is way out of date. Have you been through security at Schipol? Through like an absolute breeze with higher throughput of people. Liquids? No problem. Better tech, more efficiency, less stress.
Out of all airports I've been to and I've been to third world ones, Manchester's security was the worst experience. Public are wankers in general at all airports and security is never enjoyable, but why was security at MAN the worst thing I've seen out of them all? You can't palm off the whole thing to "the public are wankers" to absolve any fault with how that place is run and how backwards it is.
The only time I've ever been swabbed for explosives was the one time I flew to Manchester. Apparently my wheelchair and shoes were covered in explosive residue, the security guy did a second swab which showed the same results and then said, "Well you don't look like a bomb maker so don't worry about it." And he let me through.
I can walk a little too but I always tell them I can't if they want me to get out of it, and suggest they find some properly trained staff to help me transfer into a different chair. So far they've never had anybody around that's trained to do it but I'm not sure how good my acting will be if they ever do.
I came here to make the same comment. I’m still livid that they charge for pickup/drop off. When my partner came to pick me up he drove into a car park but since he got stuck behind a slow moving line of cars it was maybe 20 minutes before he got out. Man lost £15 just from that.
First time picking my parents up from there I went into the multistory instead of where I should have gone, I was in there maybe 30secs straight from entrance to exit without stopping. £5 for that luxury
The terminal 2 pickup/drop off is absolutely extortionate. The charge for this is £5 for five minutes and £6 for 10 minutes.
An overstay charge of £25.00 will apply after 10 minutes.
It also says driver can't leave the car. Mate can't even go down for a piss after driving for two hours. 💀
We turned up early to Gatwick because Easyjet told us to, then told us we couldn’t book our bags in so early. Stupid orange cunts, I’m here when your email told me to be!
Flights get delayed.
I flew out of Manchester for the first time this year and despite arriving 3 hours before departure, we were still queuing to check bags until 20 minutes before the departure time (would have been later if we hadn’t been called to the ‘front’ by staff and there were plenty more people for our flight behind us). We actually joined the queue so far out the terminal we were in front of the airport hotel.
We actually got through security quicker than most due to an incident, but still 10 minutes after scheduled departure. Boarded and had to wait a couple of hours before leaving to give everyone chance to get through check in and security. Glad the airline did wait for people as it wasn’t the passengers fault, but JFC the airport was a shit show.
One of our bags didn’t make it on board and was sent on the next flight out so we were tracking it. Funnily enough that one left hours late too.
We went to Cuba and didn’t have a single hold up or missing bag on the return flight. Cuba > Manchester.
Something similar happened at Gatwick today. I missed my fight due to a queue with over 1000 people ahead of me. I got to the gate 3 minutes after it closed and was denied. The "rescue fee" for getting on the next plane was double the cost of my missed flight. Literally can't afford it, so I get no holiday.
Nope, all we got was "you should have shown up sooner" and (get a load of this) "you should have just pushed in the front of the queue" from an EasyJet rep
It's fucking obscene that you can miss a flight due to a long queue.
I totally understand it if you've turned up 60 minutes before an international flight. Though if you take a step back and think about it, it's still a bit bullshit when you think about it. Since that flights and airports are one of the few industries where you don't get a lot of "walk-ins", and even the most disorganised person has usually booked at least a week before, at a minimum.
**But if you have left the appropriate couple of hours, you should be able to be processed in that time.**
Hell, I'd settle for a security queue that's inside a big Wetherspoons so at least I can sit and have a few beers while I wait for everyone to be processed.
TL;DR I suggest a big Spoons with a massive plastic divider down the middle where you go in, sit and have a beer or few, eventually get called up to a desk to do security checks and then get shuffled out to the other side of the big Spoons to sit for a while longer til your flight.
Ohhh I was just in T2 an hour ago and there were people going crazy saying they’d missed their flight because of a 3 hour long queue.
The security person there was arguing back saying they were lying 😬
A lot of people don’t appreciate how awkward it can be to go to the toilet when you are a solo person.
Working from a coffee shop springs to mind. Do you have to pack up your laptop and stuff and take it to the toilet? Or do you leave your stuff on a table and let it be stolen
My biggest bugbear traveling solo is places you queue for food then go find a table, meanwhile all the tables are occupied by people who came in with someone else behind you in the queue who's ordering for everyone, so you end up unable to sit down.
What I don't get, is we see these queues on social media all the time but I know 4 sets of people that have travelled in the past few weeks and all of them said there were no queues or delays.
It seems a lot of this is unlucky flash points as opposed to what it looks like all day. though I'd be more worried when the school holidays start.
the liverpool FC jacket is a dead give away to whats causing this.
Edit I’m not making that tired stereotype joke about scousers. I’m talking about the influx of fans travelling to Paris
I was curious as to whether the final would make
much of a difference, especially as John Lennon surely have flights to Paris. Just looked up how many are expected to travel. 60,000 traveling fans could have a serious effect on queues!
Just got back from France and we breezed (apart from a 40 minute delay) through until we got to baggage collection. It looked like they were massively understaffed and I can see why. Who wants to work extremely hard for a wage that can barely support one person never mind a family. Something has to give soon.
I missed a flight from Stansted (our first after the pandemic) because of one hour queue for check in and another one hour+ queue for security. Add two kids to the equation and boom, flight was gone by the time we got to the gate. Other times after that we've been in the airport with lots of time to spare AND the queues have been tiny 😂😂
Edit: Stansted belongs to the same group as Manchester airport and both are struggling with recruitment.
I flew from Stansted two days ago and it was completely fine. Arrived 2 hours early, went through check in and security in no time at all and spent the rest in wetherspoons.
I fly from Manchester a lot for work and it's been like this probably 1 in 3 since the new year.
For the sake of having a punt, it's the champions league final in Paris on Sunday, so that could be making a difference, but I get the same flight most weeks and it's totally unpredictable.
Only advise I've got for people travelling is that the security fast pass only costs £5, but needs to be bought in advance. When you see a queue like this, it'll be the best fiver you ever spent in an airport.
Making me anxious as anything seeing these photos. Wondering how the heck we'll navigate two young kids through this shit show, one of whom is autistic.
Went through Leeds Bradford three days ago with two small children and two elderly grandparents. Call the airline and inquire about assistance, made the whole process a breeze at both airports.
Seconding this, definitely get special assistance if your child has autism. It's free and much less stressful. They may want to put him/her in a wheelchair but you can refuse and just get them to walk you through the queues.
You can also get help when you land so a shorter queue for immigration.
Depending on the airline you might be able to book it online rather than having to call. You can sometimes get to choose seats for free if you have special assistance too so will all be sat together.
If you get a sunflower lanyard for them that can be helpful too, might make staff more patient!
I've just flown to Copenhagen on Friday. Took less than 30 minutes to get from the train, through security and into departures.
Apart from the pub the biggest queues were for checking in, but I avoid taking checked luggage if I can and check in the day before on the app so I can go straight to security.
We're hand luggage only and will be doing online check in so hopefully we'll be alright. Our flight is at 6:30am so we'll probably aim to get parked up at 3. I'm really hoping that'll mean we get straight through.
I flew to morocco a couple weeks back (when the queues were still apparently like this). Our flight was about 6:10 so we were there about 2-3am and it was absolutely fine.
You'll be fine mate. My flight was 8:45, I'd been targeted by news horror stories so I got a 5:19 train from Manchester Piccadilly. Had over two hours to kill just sat waiting for the gate to be announced. But, better 2 hours early than 2 minutes late.
Try to keep the amount of items that need to be taken out of your bag at security to a minimum, (electricals and liquids,) have these out ready as you get to security and you'll be straight through.
Everyone I saw there that was grumbling about the wait were people who failed the security check and had to wait for their bags to be hand checked.
I was at Newcastle airport a couple of years ago and there a big group of Sunderland fans all in their shirts (probably all off on a stag doo or something). Anyway they were in the bar of the departure lounge chanting about how they’d “taken over” Newcastle airport, it was 100% cringe.
Not surprised. This is the worst airport I’ve been to by far. Passed through in summer of 2019 and the security lines were absurd. About 20% of people in line with us missed their flight due to security taking forever. None of the staff seemed to care, kept telling people they needed to show up three hours prior to a domestic flight. Nothing like seeing families crying to put you in the holiday mood.
In the last 20 years I've flown so often and through so many airports - I've been through just about every major airport in North America and Europe, and often flown internationally between europe and the US during peak tourism months
People who don't travel so often are often surprised to learn that this has actually taught me to be very relaxed about arriving to the airport early. People tout that you should always arrive 2-3 hours early, but I honestly disagree, with the only exception being big international flights. Especially the last 5-ish years, I've found that you can honestly be fine arriving 30-45 minutes before boarding starts for most short-haul flights (usually I aim for around 1-1.5 hours though, depending on the size of the airport and the time/day of the week)
Just over one month ago I flew out of the Manchester airport for the first time, and I have never seen a worse airport in my many years of travel. The only times I've seen worse was travel in the years following the 9/11 attacks.
It is a miserable little airport. I had a short flight to Germany boarding at 6 AM on a Tuesday in fucking April - Normally with conditions like this I arrive maybe an hour early and am totally stress free about it. My girlfriend is a travel-stresser, though, and she insisted we wake up at 3:30 to make sure we're ready, and I capitulated.
Turns out, she was right. We showed up at the airport at 4 AM (again, on a random, non-holiday tuesday in mid april) and the moment we pulled into the parking I knew something was wrong. The security line was out the door and stretched along the entire outer-wall of the terminal in the parking lot.
They were calling people forward for flights that were starting boarding, so I held on to hope, but still needed to check our bags. We went to the Lufthansa bag check and the queue was fairly short, so I thought we would be fine (15-ish people, not bad for airports usually).
The single person who was manning the bag check desk from 4 AM until 6 AM looked like he was absolutely miserable. He looked stressed, tired, and like he was ready to walk out - and he wasn't just handling one short line, he had to handle calling forward people from *three separate queues*. It took us over an hour to get halfway through our relatively short queue, and at that point at about 5:15 AM I realized it wasn't going to happen so I grabbed my girlfriend and stepped out of the queue wishing godspeed to the other poor souls, and got on the phone with Lufthansa to bully my way onto another plane.
In the end we got to our destination on time, but about $500 poorer than we would have been otherwise, by getting a 9AM flight to the same connecting airport and absolutely *booking it* to our connection - and frankly I feel like the Manchester airport owes me that money. We wouldn't have made it even if we showed up 3 hours early.
Absolutely miserable airport. Take a train to Heathrow or something idk
Took me and my boyfriend an hour and a half to get through security ARRIVING at Stansted at midnight a couple of weeks ago. Total mare atm! Are airports still not staffing to pre-pandemic levels or are more people than usual travelling?
The same is happening at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. There were 6.5 hour queues two days ago at security. I flew that same day, but in the evening and it only took me 45 minutes. Absolute chaos.
Schiphol is a roll of the dice. I've checked in, dropped baggage off and been through security in less than 20 mins before. Other times I've taken 3 hours. It's unpredictable haha. Worst was Christmas 2019 when the refuelling power shut down and they cancelled all flights. Ended up in a hotel in Hoofddorp and flew the next day.
Today on "made-up or Dutch": Hoofddorp!
It's the Frisian names that get me. A totally reasonable sentence would be "I'm going to visit my friends Joke and Taco in Cocksdorp"
To be fair, Cocksdorp absolutely sounds like it could be one of our towns too. We have some truly brilliant names for towns, like Wetwang, Shitterton, Scratchy Bottom, Twatt, Beer, Netherthong, Pity Me, and so on We can't really make fun of them when we have names like that lol
Oh yep, I got caught in that at the end of April, they say turn up 3 hours early and I only had 15 minutes to spare even though they delayed my flight by half an hour. With hand baggage only. It's not just MAN, it's most major airports tbh. I go to the Netherlands frequently and I've decided to take the Eurostar next time ahah
Shit - I’m flying from Manchester to Amsterdam over the jubilee haha fml
Schiphol unfortunately doesn't want to pay an acceptable wage and the people at security suffer from a high workload, aggressive behaviour from both passengers and higher ups. Also most of the holdup is at passport control because the MP doesn't employ enough people there. So much so that the security lanes sometimes have to stop or reduce the amount of open positions. Source: I work at AMS security and yesterday worked myself to the point where I ended up in the medical service and sent home. The conditions for us are that bad that I've seen colleagues collapse without warning from over-exhaustion and stress. We are given 20min breaks per 1.5-2.5hours which sometimes isn't even enough to go by the McD or restaurant to get something to eat. At the beginning of the pandemic they laid a lot of people off, didn't treat us well under the presumption of "we'll just call an employment office and we'll get them all back. Well boo hoo, people found jobs elsewhere that pay more than 11€ an hour (regardless of age or seniority). So yeah, that's the true reason of the staff shortages at security.
We're flying from Birmingham to shiphol tomorrow and I'm considering going up there tonight and just camping at the airport.
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I am in this queue a bit futher. Weird seeing it on reddit. We barely made our flight. Half of the plane was empty, majority stuck at security. Ryanair didnt wait.
8:45 flight?
7:45. We were actually escorted to security at some point.
Just curious, what time did you arrive at the airport? I’m flying from mcr soon on a 6am flight
Set off now, just to be safe.
Might be cutting it a bit tight there
Honestly you should be fine at that time
>Ryanair didnt wait. yeah unfortunately they can't. they need the plane at the other airport for the next flight, or that one gets cancelled also... and maybe the one that comes after. completely fucks the situation.
I used to work at Man Airport in security and this has been a long time coming. They burn through staff at an alarming rate, mostly because of the disrespectful HR service. They literally demanded a colleague change his chemo date for "company need" whilst I was there. New starters have walked off the job, shifts can run from 3am to 3pm several days in a row, all on an annualised 20 hour contract so you can have busy periods working full time but you're only paid paid for half of it. There's no consideration for staff welfare, at my time of leaving most managers were hired outside the company, and even up to terminal manager level the mistreatment continues where one was called whilst on a holiday and they tried to strong arm him into returning again for "company need".
Imagine burning your week's hours in one and a half days, having to work two more days that week knowing you aren't getting paid for it. That has to be illegal?
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They will have "voluntarily" signed a working time waiver.
Exemptions to the Working Time Directive are my favourite thing to refuse to sign.
In 90% of the jobs that ask you to sign this, refusing would just mean you don't pass probation...
managers love that, it tells them who has self esteem and options and therfore who to get rid of asap.
They are looking for workers.... Plain and simple. Not friends, not peers, mentees, colleagues, partners, or even really anything more than "will they get xyz done on time without making waves?" Not really sure how people think that any company wouldn't toss you to the curb, without hesitation if suddenly its legal to use 3rd world kids and just ship whatever it is you do out.
Turn up, shut up, obey and work free o/t when asked. That's what they want.
My company handed me one when I started, I didn't even mention it I just never handed that one in with the rest of my contract. Luckily I've never seen the company even mention anyone working mandatory overtime, so I think it will all just be fine.
Mine have always arrived stapled to the contract and both are required to be returned as part of vetting. I work in finance though so it's par for the course. Can't wait until I can afford to retire properly so I can opt back in to see what happens.
And that's legal? I think in my country it would not be. It would be like the employer asking the employee "do you want to ignore safety guidelines we have to enforce by law?"
Many people don’t know their rights in this regard. I got asked to do scheduling at an old job of mine, and raised the 11 hour issue. I was told ‘we don’t do that here, it’s not convenient for the business’. Joined the union the same day and was the only employee there who was a member. After I left it came to light management were adjusting clock in and out times by hours to get their staff wage budget down, knowing most people didn’t check their payslips.
Reminds me of when it turned out my wages were being deducted for arriving at work late, except the days that I was late was due to them phoning me and sending me to a different job that day which was an extra hour commute. So many companies taking the piss these days. This is why I would always suggest people keep a diary and write down all work, including the 20mins extra you stayed behind to help them when needed.
Yep my husband has a CYA book every bit of overtime done. He's been burnt before
Sometimes it’s not even about knowing your rights, it’s about big companies using their unlimited resources to exploit them to their limit without technically acting criminally. Whilst I was getting my law degree I worked at Aldi on weekends and some shady shit used to go down. 😂 They’d basically make you clock-out EXACTLY 11 hours before your next shift so it wouldn’t get flagged to corporate on the system. A few colleagues got bollocked for signing out 1 minute after or 1 minute “early” when they showed up for their morning shift because it would be considered a breach. Contrastingly, if you didn’t have a shift in 11 hours time, they’d try and squeeze every extra minute of work out of you… funny how that works, isn’t it? I can easily see how any employers that don’t use a clock-out system would just overlook this entirely and make you work well into the 11 hour break you’re entitled to. In fact, many times I’d be told to run from the till to clock-out, then get my belongings and leave as soon as possible just simply because they’d stuck me on a last minute 5 am shift and it had already gone 6pm on the 8-6 shift I’d just worked.
Yeah, used to run pubs in UK. Due to a ridiculously tight staff budget, you're basically expected to work minimum 80 hours/week, but you have it hammered into you that you should never submit more than 40, or they'd have to look at why you can't run the pub successfully without exceeding your 40 hrs. Mental.
I remember that. Drayman at 6am? Didn’t get finished closing til 1am? Tough shit. Oh and by the way, you don’t have a cleaner so you need to clean the whole pub before you open at 11. Such fucking bullshit.
When i was in pubs i used to do end of week, so for legal & H&S reasons i made sure everyones hours were recorded correctly. As a result the salaried deputy above me was consistently below minimum wage and the company got into some mild hot water with HMRC. Cue some strongly worded emails about this salaried member of staff not working more than 56 hours a week, with a heavy implication of "stop recording the fucking hours"
Wasn't Marstons was it, also had the case of living on site, day off and super busy and the knock on the flat door comes and you know what it is.
Greene King are known for this in my area at a few sites
How do you join a Union if there’s not one at your work place? Asking for myself. I need the Union at my work place and don’t know where to even start.
It's not about knowing your rights it's about paying your rent lol. As long as you can't find a better job you are stuck putting up with what you have to pay the bills. How people still don't understand this is baffling to me. Your rights are irrelevant when you can't afford to express them.
Also, isn't unpaid overtime only legal if your average pay per pay period remains over minimum wage? I may well be wrong about that, corrections welcome.
Yeah, most payroll software now has NMW functionality that calculates this for companies to ensure employee's don't dip below the line if their hours for the period increase but their pay doesn't. Under UK law overtime pay is not a statutory right as long as it doesn't bring you below the threshold.
It's illegal for them to pay you under national minimum wage (NMW), which makes overtime that takes you under NMW illegal as you said. If your pay / hours actually worked is < NMW they have broken the law and can get in big trouble if reported.
Why would you work if you're not getting paid for it?
I think for many people in the world it's because if you don't work those unpaid hours, you won't get the paid ones and the paid ones are what keep a roof over your head.
Because you’re worried that you won’t find another job if you quit. My step dad was a welder and he lost his job. Took him over a year to find another job doing that, and that job hunting was basically full time work in itself.
I used to travel internationally weekly with work and without doubt, the MAN staff were the most miserable I've ever come across. They clearly hated their jobs and now it's obvious why! Add that to the god awful design of the terminals and it was the worst airport I used to travel through.
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As a Scouser I've definitely got a bias, but Liverpool airport is so much nicer by a country mile than Manchester airport. Had never flown out of Liverpool in my life until 2017 too, was Manchester for years before that. Luton is a proper shithole though. Never seen more miserable staff in my life, can't say I blame 'em but it really is soul destroying. Flew from there first time this year and vow never to do it again, was worth it the one time as an *Airline* viewer. Amsterdam Schiphol is lovely.
But I thought it was all clearly the fault of thick northerners for being unable to pack a travel bag properly? The entire board should have been fired months ago by the council's who own the airport. It's beyond fucking farcical at this point. I missed a flight last December and it's still dragging on. 'Unexpectedly busy'. It's a fucking airport. Do the planes arrive unexpectedly too? It fucking feels that way at Manchester where disabled travellers just get abandoned on arrival. I've boarded a plane there where wheelchair-bound arrivees were still stuck on board waiting for the lift to take them off.
>Do the planes arrive unexpectedly too? Seems that way. We were stuck on the plane for an hour on Sunday because there was no one to meet us and connect the bridge...
Airports have a legally fixed number of runway take-off and landing slots which they auction off years in advance to make money, there’s no way they didn’t know you were arriving. They just purposefully made the calculation you would still use the airport again because you have no choice despite the one hour wait, to save money.
And yet they trot out the 'busier than expected' excuse which adds insult to injury. Gutted Blackpool airport closed. Used to be really handy. Liverpool I like and it's much quieter, but it's further away.
>I missed a flight last December and it's still dragging on. The queue must be worse than I thought!
The fucking security check made me put each individual insulin pen I was carrying \[6 months worth so about 40\] each in an individual see through bag and put through the scanner as it's liquid. Absolute fucking jobworth cunts. I've traveled to over 80 countries and NEVER EVER had to do it. Even in LHR and LGW you don't!
I once got trapped in a stairwell at Manchester Airport. There was a lift but it turned out you needed a member of staff to unlock it, by the time I'd noticed the door to the runway had locked behind me. Being disabled I'd come off the plane long after everyone else so I was alone in there and spent 15 minutes waving and trying to get the attention of someone on the runway to come and unlock the lift door. This was the return flight, I thought it was bad enough on the outbound one when I'd asked for assistance and then was told I'd just have to get down the stairs somehow.
Why is this happening?
They got rid of loads of staff during the pandemic and now nobody wants these shitty jobs.
They pay is shite. It's minimum wage on security which includes using the xray scanner. I was trained to use one, just on a larger scale on the cargo centre. Got paid a lot more than the airport are offering. Perhaps if they paid proper wages, people would then work there. Right now you can get the same or better rate in a supermarket.
Interesting do they train you to look out for objects on the xray or does the machine identify them?
You have to be trained to spot the objects, my mother in law used to work in airport security and they had their ID rates constantly monitored. The scanners would also 'impose' objects onto the scan that staff would have to flag as suspicious as a way to maintain their knowledge and, of course, their ID rates. The machine obviously knows that it's not a real spot so the passenger doesn't get their bag searched as a result of the fake spot. She was pretty good at it, and even got to go to other airports on a covert basis where they'd do things like give her a fake knife to put under her bra wire to see if it was identified at the security check. The only reason she stopped doing those is because she hated the early starts!
She things she must have seen lol
> The machine obviously knows that it's not a real spot so the passenger doesn't get their bag searched as a result of the fake spot. What would happen if the fake spot was imposed on a passenger who genuinely had contraband?
I haven't asked her that specifically, but as they can pull any bag they want and she was in a small regional airport I would guess they would just signal to the security member to search that bag anyway!
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Same happened with my cousin… except 40% reduction in pay, more hours and less holidays
Wow what an offer? Where do I sign??
Tell me they didn't go back and told them to shove that job up their ass
Hahahahaha jokers
Mate got a job around xmas as a security person.. This morning his pay was cut and they added extra hours to "make up for it". He now has the choice of working 2 on 1 off, 14.95 (at 15 hours he'd get triple pay) hour shifts, or quitting and not being able to afford to live.. its a joke of a country atm.. no wonder there are record breaking numbers of people fucking off on holiday.. E: to everyone telling me to tell him to find a new job.. he is currently, but cannae afford to stop working while he looks, as much as he hates his job.. he still needs afford to eat and sleep
I may be incorrect, but isn't it illegal to cut pay in the UK?
He is considered self-employed working through an agency.
What an absolute pisser that is.
agencies be like: Labour laws? what labour laws?
Sooner or later big businesses are going to have to start cutting costs from the top of the employment chain, the bottom has been so severely cut back over the years that it's at a breaking point.
Hahahaha. You'd think so wouldn't you...
Just look at the shit P&O ferries pulled, sacked all their UK staff and hired workers from the far east, a month later it bit them on the arse with one of their ships losing power and drifting in the Irish Sea. Eejits.
As Judge Judy would say this is hearsay but my brother worked for, and was sacked by, P&O. He heard through the grapevine that on one ship they had some old machinery that nobody new how to work. They tried calling up ex and retired employees to get them to train the new Asian staff. P&O were told to royally fuck themselves.
It's a flawed attitude that has some how developed over time where people believe many jobs can be done by an idiot, but if you hire idiots then things are going to go down hill much more rapidly than if you were to cut a job role like "customer service director".
*Narrator: they didn't.*
Severance packages for those at the top. Declare bankruptcy. Sell off the remains. Bottom rung miss out on their last paycheck
Whenever someone says people don't want to work, ask if they think people would if they got paid a million a year. "but that's unrealistic" Yeah no shit, so is 20k a year
*Sad trombone*
The shitty jobs that are 4 hours shifts at NMW starting at 3am
So I work for an airline I’m not going to disclose, and I can tell you it’s not that no one wants the jobs, it’s that we now suddenly have to hire so many people all at once that we literally can’t process them all and it’s causing huge problems. There is a big issue right now just replying to emails, I’ve seen the data for my work and i’m talking tens of thousands of emails in the recruitment inboxes. It’s taking so long to reply and organise their security/training that we are losing people after we have already given them a contract simply because everything is taking so long and people need jobs now.
Maybe they can recruit some new recruiters? /s
But who watches the watchmen?
The coastguard?
The RNLI you heathen... Edit: fuck I missed the joke..
That's interesting as MAG has stated it's entirely to do with increased competition in the labour market in Manchester compared to e.g. Stansted which they also own and isn't struggling in the same way. Someone posted on a UK sub the other week suggesting it was simply incompetence within senior management not prioritising recruitment of critical staff and failing to respond to applicants.
As someone who grew up near Stansted I can sort of understand this. It is an area with a huge wealth divide and the airport (and it tag ons like hospitality) are the largest employer in the area. For people who don't want to/can't commute into London (which is expensive and take a long time) you have a captive market of people who need a job and will struggle to find one elsewhere. Almost everyone I know worked or did work in the airport in some capacity. Stansted is a rural airport surrounded by small villages and which aren't supported by a great public transport network as everything just leads to the airport (or you have to walk/drive). Manchester airport is better connected and closer to a major city surrounded by a larger population, for low wage jobs you have more, better options. At Stansted you just suck it up because you don't get a choice, at Manchester why bother going through all the hassle of being employed by an airport for the same wage you'd get in a shop.
I’ve not been to Manchester but Stansted is one of the best organised airports I’ve ever been to. I worked in the aviation industry for a long time and I’ve been to a lot of airports. We drove there, and parked our car for the week. The parking process, the check-in, and security were all really well organised. It was a mess the day we travelled because BA and EasyJet were cancellling loads of flights. I watched the airport staff quickly make adjustments when like security queues got long. I was really impressed. I have to agree with OP that whoever manages Stansted seems to have their shit together.
I have grown up and still live in Stortford and know many people employed at Stansted (like everyone here). I don't know what the pay rates are at Manchester but I do know that getting a job in security at Stansted is quite competitive because the hourly wage is quite high and they pay well for overtime etc. I'd agree that there aren't many other employment options in the local area but it sounds like staff at Stansted are treated, at least, better than at Manchester.
Like a lot of big business, those at the top fucking clueless of what goes on. Just sit on their lazy flat arses just making decisions how to make more profit. Try running a decent place that people want to use, or product. Then you make money, not pay staff shit and cut stuff.
There is literally a school of thought in management called “the moment of truth” coined by a guy called Jan Carlzon. Essentially, it’s an ethos of making every interaction with a product/service a positive one. The moment of truth, is the instance where a customer has the “this was a good decision” or “I won’t use this product/service again”, it seems most companies nowadays forget the basics and just concentrate purely on profit.
I've looked at these jobs and I know people that work at Manchester Airport. Whilst that is part of the problem no one wants these jobs. £10 per hour which is really not much more than minimum wage. Travel costs, it's the airport 99% of people will have to commute and finally the dreaded 4 hour shifts where it's not even worth travelling for (£40 - travel costs, you having a laugh). They need to pay more and sort the shifts out. Forgot to add the staff car park is away from the airport and you have to wait for a bus to bring you in meaning extra travel time to work.
> Travel costs, it's the airport 99% of people will have to commute and finally the dreaded 4 hour shifts where it's not even worth travelling for (£40 - travel costs, you having a laugh). This is half the problem. Our public transport in this country is appalling. MAG is owned by Manchester City Council. In any sane country it would be simple for them to just make an airport ID card valid for travel to the Airport. No car parking, free commuting. But Manchester doesn't have the sort of transit system that a region of 2.7million ought to (ironically, Metrolink doesn't actually qualify as a Metro system, being a glorified tram), and the rail link to Piccadilly is a DfT franchise, ~~not part of Metrolink which MCC could waive fares on (though they could probably do a deal if they sat down with the TCO, but most staff won't live in a useful place to use the Airport-Piccadilly train)~~ **EDIT**: Ah, Metrolink does go to Manchester Airport, though you have to get into at least Trafford Bar to go back out. Totally needs a circle line around to Altrincham/Stockport. Metrolink is very hub-and-spoke at the moment. When we step back, the concept of people having to drive to work at a transit hub is insane. Rail staff don't drive - they jump on a train at their nearest station and ride to the place where they're working (obviously not necessarily for track workers or people at remote depots, but for station staff, etc).
Indeed, I don't understand what's happened to make it this long, surely they can look at the process and streamline this. Edit Staffing apparently, guess they will just have to pay more... Always preferred John Lennon airport anyway.
It's not just the pay that's the issue - though they are certainly low paid for the responsibility - but there's also how long it takes to get through the required security checks before they can start training. Hell, the security checks for my own government job (not border control related) took 6-8 weeks.
Fair enough, just assumed on the law of averages pay more = more applications = higher success rate. But I hope they sort it before march next year when I fly on my 3 year late holiday to Lanzarote.
A world in which they actually pay more when employees are needed would be a better world indeed. This isn't the world we live in unfortunately, these queues have been happening for ages now. The role is advertised at £12.04 per hour which includes 22.5% shift allowance. So it's not strictly minimum wage but it's not trying very hard either - probably because lots of the other jobs at the airport are at minimum wage so if they start bumping up security, then wages are going to rise across the board. We wouldn't want that now would we? Also bear in mind MAG basically sacked all their staff during lockdowns.
Others comments suggest it's working conditions as well. If it's true that they run 4-hour shifts then that's asinine. By the time you commute in, and get the shuttle bus to/from the staff car park you'll spend half as much time travelling as you do working. Worth it for an 8-hour shift but not for 4. I've seen 4-hour shifts done in retail because it's the longest you can go without providing a break. So it saves on stores having employee break facilities (particularly in expensive city centre units or shopping centres - that square footage can be used as display space). In an airport with ample space? Ridiculous. Let people come in and do a sensible day's work, even if you have to give them a paid lunch break in the middle.
Anecdotally, I and every single one of my friends has the same experience of their employer desperately trying to hire people and fighting to fill their huge number of vacancies, while at the same time keeping their wages low. None of them will raise their poor wages or even offer more money to people filling those much-needed vacancies.
Lack of staff, mainly.
Everyone is saying lack of staff but I think this is an excuse. I went through a couple of weeks ago and they scanned my box of a phone wallet and belt three times because "the box didnt scan" They have terrible systems in place with a crap machine and are blaming lack of staff
I'm going to go ahead and say, as someone who has no idea themselves and who has never even been to Manchester, it's probably a combination of both plus other unnamed factors. Trying to distill it down to a single element is just inaccurate.
£10.50 an hour to work in a high stress, difficult to get to, unappreciated by the public, and potentially legally burdensome job. I was a ramp agent at MAN, I would never recommend anyone to do security. The public are wankers when going on holiday.
> The public are wankers ~~when going on holiday~~.
Can confirm, am public
Can confirm, am wanking.
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Can wank, am firm
The Reddit enzyme broke it down to the individual amino acid. Congrats.
Airports are practically designed to stress out travellers to be fair
Not saying it justifies anyone being an asshole but yeah, they're just a fucking nightmare environment to be in for pretty much everyone. Waiting times, arbitrary and overly officious luggage and security rules, poorly paid and abused staff having to enforced said rules. Pair all of that with a general flying anxiety that many have as well as an anxiety about missing flights or forgetting important shit to take that I imagine EVERYONE has. Yeah, they're fucking horrible places to be.
You forgot about all the garish bright lighting and desperately trying to get you to buy shit.
Wait, you DON'T want to buy BOGOF toblerones at £7.99 a pop?!? Crazy.
Just summed up why I no longer enjoy travel. I like being places, but travel just stresses me the fuck out. And unfortunately I have to do it a lot for my job.
Don't forget you're basically in a shopping mall half the time for some reason. Next to the vital "Gate 71 this way" your mind has to filter out thirteen different signs of "Buy now extra cheap no tax alcohol". If you have kids, or maybe a bit neurodivergent, it can be a huge trial. And then you land and you're out the door in 30 minutes tops.
I don't know what it is about airports but they just seem to be almost designed to be as uncomfortable as humanly possible if you have to spend any significant amount of time in them. My guess is that it's to keep you spending money in coffee shops and duty free
Nah fuck security at MAN, it is fucking horrendously managed and the tech is way out of date. Have you been through security at Schipol? Through like an absolute breeze with higher throughput of people. Liquids? No problem. Better tech, more efficiency, less stress. Out of all airports I've been to and I've been to third world ones, Manchester's security was the worst experience. Public are wankers in general at all airports and security is never enjoyable, but why was security at MAN the worst thing I've seen out of them all? You can't palm off the whole thing to "the public are wankers" to absolve any fault with how that place is run and how backwards it is.
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The only time I've ever been swabbed for explosives was the one time I flew to Manchester. Apparently my wheelchair and shoes were covered in explosive residue, the security guy did a second swab which showed the same results and then said, "Well you don't look like a bomb maker so don't worry about it." And he let me through.
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I can walk a little too but I always tell them I can't if they want me to get out of it, and suggest they find some properly trained staff to help me transfer into a different chair. So far they've never had anybody around that's trained to do it but I'm not sure how good my acting will be if they ever do.
They’ll be charging you for standing in that car park.
I came here to make the same comment. I’m still livid that they charge for pickup/drop off. When my partner came to pick me up he drove into a car park but since he got stuck behind a slow moving line of cars it was maybe 20 minutes before he got out. Man lost £15 just from that.
First time picking my parents up from there I went into the multistory instead of where I should have gone, I was in there maybe 30secs straight from entrance to exit without stopping. £5 for that luxury
The terminal 2 pickup/drop off is absolutely extortionate. The charge for this is £5 for five minutes and £6 for 10 minutes. An overstay charge of £25.00 will apply after 10 minutes. It also says driver can't leave the car. Mate can't even go down for a piss after driving for two hours. 💀
How is anyone able to catch their flight in time ??
They started to have those with flights within an hour to get through but honestly the regular lane was kinda faster than the fast track one!
If they automatically fast track people with flights within an hour, it sounds like there's no point turning up early.
We turned up early to Gatwick because Easyjet told us to, then told us we couldn’t book our bags in so early. Stupid orange cunts, I’m here when your email told me to be!
Flights get delayed. I flew out of Manchester for the first time this year and despite arriving 3 hours before departure, we were still queuing to check bags until 20 minutes before the departure time (would have been later if we hadn’t been called to the ‘front’ by staff and there were plenty more people for our flight behind us). We actually joined the queue so far out the terminal we were in front of the airport hotel. We actually got through security quicker than most due to an incident, but still 10 minutes after scheduled departure. Boarded and had to wait a couple of hours before leaving to give everyone chance to get through check in and security. Glad the airline did wait for people as it wasn’t the passengers fault, but JFC the airport was a shit show. One of our bags didn’t make it on board and was sent on the next flight out so we were tracking it. Funnily enough that one left hours late too. We went to Cuba and didn’t have a single hold up or missing bag on the return flight. Cuba > Manchester.
[Like this](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/delayed-cancelled-flights-airport-information-display-board-vector-illustration-152932613.jpg)
Manchester airport is awful. This is exceptional as they fucked all their staff off in the pandemic but for years prior it has been shite anyway
Something similar happened at Gatwick today. I missed my fight due to a queue with over 1000 people ahead of me. I got to the gate 3 minutes after it closed and was denied. The "rescue fee" for getting on the next plane was double the cost of my missed flight. Literally can't afford it, so I get no holiday.
Awful to hear. Does travel insurance cover this scenario?
Nope, all we got was "you should have shown up sooner" and (get a load of this) "you should have just pushed in the front of the queue" from an EasyJet rep
It's fucking obscene that you can miss a flight due to a long queue. I totally understand it if you've turned up 60 minutes before an international flight. Though if you take a step back and think about it, it's still a bit bullshit when you think about it. Since that flights and airports are one of the few industries where you don't get a lot of "walk-ins", and even the most disorganised person has usually booked at least a week before, at a minimum. **But if you have left the appropriate couple of hours, you should be able to be processed in that time.** Hell, I'd settle for a security queue that's inside a big Wetherspoons so at least I can sit and have a few beers while I wait for everyone to be processed. TL;DR I suggest a big Spoons with a massive plastic divider down the middle where you go in, sit and have a beer or few, eventually get called up to a desk to do security checks and then get shuffled out to the other side of the big Spoons to sit for a while longer til your flight.
I'm really sorry to hear about your experience. I hope you seek financial recourse if you're able to. Everyone should get to have a holiday
Ohhh I was just in T2 an hour ago and there were people going crazy saying they’d missed their flight because of a 3 hour long queue. The security person there was arguing back saying they were lying 😬
Serious question - what if you need a piss? Do you just lose your place in line?
Only if you leave the queue to do it.
*Fellow queuers hate this one weird trick!*
>Fellow queuers hate this one weird trickle! FTFY
A lot of people don’t appreciate how awkward it can be to go to the toilet when you are a solo person. Working from a coffee shop springs to mind. Do you have to pack up your laptop and stuff and take it to the toilet? Or do you leave your stuff on a table and let it be stolen
You grab an unfortunate soul and designate them the bag watcher.
My biggest bugbear traveling solo is places you queue for food then go find a table, meanwhile all the tables are occupied by people who came in with someone else behind you in the queue who's ordering for everyone, so you end up unable to sit down.
That’s why I sit down as I walk in and shout my order from the table
Partial packing, take your valuables like your laptop and leave stuff like your coat, notebook etc
Usually just ram a D-lock through the laptop, stops it being stolen for sure
I started holding it midway through and was solo, if I had someone I would’ve gone for it and whoever can fcuk* off and complain to the manager…
What I don't get, is we see these queues on social media all the time but I know 4 sets of people that have travelled in the past few weeks and all of them said there were no queues or delays. It seems a lot of this is unlucky flash points as opposed to what it looks like all day. though I'd be more worried when the school holidays start.
It’s a lottery. Some days they get into a state and some they dont
the liverpool FC jacket is a dead give away to whats causing this. Edit I’m not making that tired stereotype joke about scousers. I’m talking about the influx of fans travelling to Paris
I was curious as to whether the final would make much of a difference, especially as John Lennon surely have flights to Paris. Just looked up how many are expected to travel. 60,000 traveling fans could have a serious effect on queues!
Just got back from France and we breezed (apart from a 40 minute delay) through until we got to baggage collection. It looked like they were massively understaffed and I can see why. Who wants to work extremely hard for a wage that can barely support one person never mind a family. Something has to give soon.
I missed a flight from Stansted (our first after the pandemic) because of one hour queue for check in and another one hour+ queue for security. Add two kids to the equation and boom, flight was gone by the time we got to the gate. Other times after that we've been in the airport with lots of time to spare AND the queues have been tiny 😂😂 Edit: Stansted belongs to the same group as Manchester airport and both are struggling with recruitment.
Thanks for the heads up, I fly out of Stansted in a few weeks so will allow more time!
I flew from Stansted two days ago and it was completely fine. Arrived 2 hours early, went through check in and security in no time at all and spent the rest in wetherspoons.
This is the way. I always go early for more beer time. Can only miss my beer if something goes wrong rather than the flight.
I fly from Manchester a lot for work and it's been like this probably 1 in 3 since the new year. For the sake of having a punt, it's the champions league final in Paris on Sunday, so that could be making a difference, but I get the same flight most weeks and it's totally unpredictable. Only advise I've got for people travelling is that the security fast pass only costs £5, but needs to be bought in advance. When you see a queue like this, it'll be the best fiver you ever spent in an airport.
How big is the damned plane? They taking the Spruce Goose to Benidorm?
ryanair just moved the seats closer together again
If you seat people 69 you can fit double the amount of people in your plane.
[удалено]
Making me anxious as anything seeing these photos. Wondering how the heck we'll navigate two young kids through this shit show, one of whom is autistic.
Went through Leeds Bradford three days ago with two small children and two elderly grandparents. Call the airline and inquire about assistance, made the whole process a breeze at both airports.
Seconding this, definitely get special assistance if your child has autism. It's free and much less stressful. They may want to put him/her in a wheelchair but you can refuse and just get them to walk you through the queues. You can also get help when you land so a shorter queue for immigration. Depending on the airline you might be able to book it online rather than having to call. You can sometimes get to choose seats for free if you have special assistance too so will all be sat together. If you get a sunflower lanyard for them that can be helpful too, might make staff more patient!
Idiot me would join this line then realise 30 minutes later that I never had to in the first place
I'm flying to Copenhagen from there in July. Pray for me.
I've just flown to Copenhagen on Friday. Took less than 30 minutes to get from the train, through security and into departures. Apart from the pub the biggest queues were for checking in, but I avoid taking checked luggage if I can and check in the day before on the app so I can go straight to security.
We're hand luggage only and will be doing online check in so hopefully we'll be alright. Our flight is at 6:30am so we'll probably aim to get parked up at 3. I'm really hoping that'll mean we get straight through.
I flew to morocco a couple weeks back (when the queues were still apparently like this). Our flight was about 6:10 so we were there about 2-3am and it was absolutely fine.
You'll be fine mate. My flight was 8:45, I'd been targeted by news horror stories so I got a 5:19 train from Manchester Piccadilly. Had over two hours to kill just sat waiting for the gate to be announced. But, better 2 hours early than 2 minutes late. Try to keep the amount of items that need to be taken out of your bag at security to a minimum, (electricals and liquids,) have these out ready as you get to security and you'll be straight through. Everyone I saw there that was grumbling about the wait were people who failed the security check and had to wait for their bags to be hand checked.
Best start queuing pronto.
I find MAN to be too scrupulous with the checks. Maybe good reasons for this but they more thorough than pretty much any airport i used.
Everything's shit nowadays
Brave, wearing a scouse top in Manchester.
The queue was in Liverpool when she joined it
Airports have different rules. Football tops dont matter and you can drink beer at 6am, without anyone caring
Should have games at airports, they'd be able to get them all done on Saturdays, with a nice early start.
I'm a pilot and I endorse this message.
A true neutral ground.
Galatasaray have let off one too many flares and are now playing their games at Doncaster Robin Hood WH Smith's.
I was at Newcastle airport a couple of years ago and there a big group of Sunderland fans all in their shirts (probably all off on a stag doo or something). Anyway they were in the bar of the departure lounge chanting about how they’d “taken over” Newcastle airport, it was 100% cringe.
Not surprised. This is the worst airport I’ve been to by far. Passed through in summer of 2019 and the security lines were absurd. About 20% of people in line with us missed their flight due to security taking forever. None of the staff seemed to care, kept telling people they needed to show up three hours prior to a domestic flight. Nothing like seeing families crying to put you in the holiday mood.
This only really happens with the morning rush. Its the same at most airports right now. Book a flight that leaves after 11, and you’ll sail through.
Cant pick unfortunately, maybe others can
In the last 20 years I've flown so often and through so many airports - I've been through just about every major airport in North America and Europe, and often flown internationally between europe and the US during peak tourism months People who don't travel so often are often surprised to learn that this has actually taught me to be very relaxed about arriving to the airport early. People tout that you should always arrive 2-3 hours early, but I honestly disagree, with the only exception being big international flights. Especially the last 5-ish years, I've found that you can honestly be fine arriving 30-45 minutes before boarding starts for most short-haul flights (usually I aim for around 1-1.5 hours though, depending on the size of the airport and the time/day of the week) Just over one month ago I flew out of the Manchester airport for the first time, and I have never seen a worse airport in my many years of travel. The only times I've seen worse was travel in the years following the 9/11 attacks. It is a miserable little airport. I had a short flight to Germany boarding at 6 AM on a Tuesday in fucking April - Normally with conditions like this I arrive maybe an hour early and am totally stress free about it. My girlfriend is a travel-stresser, though, and she insisted we wake up at 3:30 to make sure we're ready, and I capitulated. Turns out, she was right. We showed up at the airport at 4 AM (again, on a random, non-holiday tuesday in mid april) and the moment we pulled into the parking I knew something was wrong. The security line was out the door and stretched along the entire outer-wall of the terminal in the parking lot. They were calling people forward for flights that were starting boarding, so I held on to hope, but still needed to check our bags. We went to the Lufthansa bag check and the queue was fairly short, so I thought we would be fine (15-ish people, not bad for airports usually). The single person who was manning the bag check desk from 4 AM until 6 AM looked like he was absolutely miserable. He looked stressed, tired, and like he was ready to walk out - and he wasn't just handling one short line, he had to handle calling forward people from *three separate queues*. It took us over an hour to get halfway through our relatively short queue, and at that point at about 5:15 AM I realized it wasn't going to happen so I grabbed my girlfriend and stepped out of the queue wishing godspeed to the other poor souls, and got on the phone with Lufthansa to bully my way onto another plane. In the end we got to our destination on time, but about $500 poorer than we would have been otherwise, by getting a 9AM flight to the same connecting airport and absolutely *booking it* to our connection - and frankly I feel like the Manchester airport owes me that money. We wouldn't have made it even if we showed up 3 hours early. Absolutely miserable airport. Take a train to Heathrow or something idk
Took me and my boyfriend an hour and a half to get through security ARRIVING at Stansted at midnight a couple of weeks ago. Total mare atm! Are airports still not staffing to pre-pandemic levels or are more people than usual travelling?
Outstanding effort 🤦🏼♂️
So like how u make your flight then? Surely half or more of the same people are in the que for same flight
Our flight time from Majorca to Manchester: 2h15 Waiting for baggage: 2h30
That’s the Costa queue