I have just experienced the misery of MAN for the first time in a couple of years. For the uninitiated, following the signs off the M56 for Term 3 Departures can lead to temporary insanity and a breakdown for the driver. We were not the only car to find itself in the 'Meet & Greet' area. Eventually the nice man on the intercom (took him 3 minutes to answer!) raised the barrier and gave us good directions on how to get to where we wanted to be. Once inside the Terminal, I looked at the departure board for my flight and it was not there. I asked a young lady who seemed to be hanging around to answer passengers' questions how I could discover where my flight was departing from. "Oh well, it probably won't appear on that. You need to go through Security and to the gates to discover which gate you are boarding at". That was really useful: "How do I find which gate I need?" "Go to the gate to find out!. Smashing!
The security screening was painless in procedure but painfully slow. Two lines of people were queuing to be screened by 2 people who moved the trays back and forth. I asked the cheerful, very helpful bloke who was fronting the operation, cracking jokes, telling people what to do with their Colgate, Kindles etc if the airport was skint. He asked why would I think that and I pointed out the complete screening stations that were sat there idle, all powered up and nobody to screen. I wondered if the airport had spent all its pocket money on a few hundred grand's worth of nice shiny kit but now didn't have the funds to pay the staff to operate it!
Once through the X-Ray thing, I was approached by the manual screener. In my hand, I was clutching a copy of my boarding pass, as it had come from my printer, on a sheet of A4 paper. Pointing to the paper he asked "What's that"? I resisted the temptation to answer "A railway carriage" and instead answered "Paper". "Oh OK".
Then, when once more dressed, I set off to find my gate but my flight was not to be seen. I then noticed an Etihad flight which just happened to be going to the same place at the same time as me (Knock). I watched the board recycle, update etc a few times to see if it would confirm this was a code share flight and the word "Flybe" would soon appear. It never did. So, instead of flying on BE663, I flew EY6066.
On the return flight all was well as we all boarded a bus to take us from the aircraft to the terminal. And then computer said "No" when the bus driver tried to get the doors to open. He waved 2 different ID cards at the card reader. No joy. He spoke to some via the intercom. No joy. He pushed a selection of buttons (presumably an access code) and computer still said no. Eventually, after more words with the intercom the doors opened.
Overall, nice terminal building with handfuls of money spent on the new parking facilities but as an overall experience, I would rate it as "a shed"!