Originally Posted by
Pin Head
Please share your hot tips.
My hot tip: Avoid Manchester!
What a truly awful airport for passengers. Some recent experiences.
A few days ago my partner was flying out on KLM. Her frequent flier status entitles her to 3 bags - and she had shopped to take full advantage of it!. The check-in agent (non KLM, but that dreadful ground service company they use) absolutely refused to believe that she was entitled to the 3rd bag and demanded that she pay 100s of $ for the extra bag. When my partner insisted, and showed her a screen grab from the KLM website, the check-in witch literally stood up and screamed abuse into her face. She was kept for 20 minutes at the checkin desk and abused. The woman's fellow check-in staff were telling her to calm down - but not actually helping. Eventually a KLM supervisor appeared, asked what the problem was, looked at the boarding pass and immediately confirmed her entitlement. Subsequently KLM staff were extremely apologetic and actually seemed to be encouraging her to raise a formal complaint, which she will do.
A few days later, I was told I was not entitled to use the fast track lane through security by a bloke at the entrance who refused to believe that I was entitled to it despite EK checkin staff (unlike KLM, EK use their own staff) reiterating that I was. This can make a huge difference in MAN, so I stuck to my guns, I was quite prepared to go back to the EK desk and ask them to explain to this bloke. Eventually he let me through. Subsequent automatic scanning detects entitlement, so what was the purpose of an ill-informed bloke at the start of the line?
And for some reason, every-time I go through at MAN I am pounced on by security and all my stuff gone through and handled and then they finally say 'I don't know why that was selected for search'. I really don't understand, those very same bags have been screened at dozens of airports in the last few weeks but only MAN consistently wants to hand check my smalls.