Originally Posted by
mickyman
FFMAN
.Perhaps there should be a business lane for you at all airports so that you can
concentrate on your work and bring in more deals without being distracted or irritated?
Oh tut tut Mickeyman. To use a topical analogy: play the ball not the man. But thanks for proving my point. I don't want any special treatment - this debate is nothing to do with that - I want
equal treatment - equal treatment with security processing at other comparable airports. I don't want to be treated like a piece of doggie doo just because I'm unlucky enough to have MAN as my 'home airport'.
There are so many people in denial about these very real issues. The real beneficiaries of recent growth are senior managers and plane spotters (the latter of which I can believe are well represented on this forum so are naturally inclined to defend everything about the airport - and they're entitled to do that of course). The truth is that MAN's security experience is much worse than much bigger airports.
As well as lack of staff, the security system itself is partly the problem. Instead of the old system where one person is processed at a time (in / out and gone) the system of having your search belongings separated slows things down dramatically. Here's what happens: you arrive at a loading point - you are one of four at each station. The other three are your 'competitors' . You pick a tray, load it and then wait for a gap to put it on the belt. And wait.... because the belt has stopped loading (see later). This slows you down because you can't pick up another tray until the previous one can be pushed through. So you wait some more. I would guess that the average number of trays per pax is three so multiply that delay by three.
Also at this point the insistence on putting carry on bags into a tray is just nonsense - I have noticed a number of foreign airports have tried this and now stopped it - Dublin being the most recent.
So through the actual body scan - no problems there. Now to the other delay at the other end. Since your three trays have been loaded separately at the front end, they come out with other people's trays mixed among them. Your first tray may be three trays in front of the second and so on. I have been counting this recently to prove my point. My last time through T1 Security A - my third tray came 16 trays after the second one (although I accept that was extreme). So again you wait. If just one tray of the average three is redirected for a manual search, the other two often remain on the belt until the search is done.This causes the belt at the delivery end to back up, causing it to stop and stopping the front belt - therefore causing further delays at the front end (see earlier).
The single loading system used at Frankfurt works properly since none of the above problems occur - you load all your trays sequentially - the result being there are rarely any security queues at an airport almost 3 time the size of MAN. Average wait at FRA is less than 5 mins I would say.
I can only suggest to the frequent flyers who are frustrated that they complain to the airlines and tell them about it.
MAN management will not listen to or care about pax but they might listen to airlines.