Did we cover the dismissal three days ago of the airport Managing Director, Karen Smart, up above ? Though my hunch is the Australian investor owners, pursuing an approach of minimum costs regardless, are actually more responsible. Maybe Grant Schapps can have a word ...
I don't know the details of Manchester shift arrangements, but at another well-known major airport
the issue was around 6 am. Staff were paid enhanced night rate for reporting between 10 pm and 6 am, so significant numbers were not on shift until 6 am. This might be fine for ramp staff etc, but for security the passengers encounter them an hour or more before they need a pushback tug operator. The modern trend for substantial first wave departures around 7 am, often the biggest wave of the day, and which sometimes seems to have completely passed security planners by, means that a peak occurs through security around 5 am to 6 am - just when only the overnight crew are on duty, and the finance department are not having any security staff starting early - and maybe they can't anyway because there are no buses at 5 am to get to work, and the airport has done nothing about making any provision.
Once you get a huge queue at 6 am it seems to take hours to recover, because again staff have been minimised to the averaghe flow per hour.
Incidentally, I have more than once noticed on the financial side that the security station hardware supplier salesmen seem more adept at scooping security budgets than the airport paying for the operating staff. There are six security stations in place but only three are manned. Big queues. The boardroom solution is to provide a further £1m ... to buy and install another three stations
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And further, how is the staffing for the retail concessions going ? One further thing that hacks me is wasting time in a long queue because security is short staffed, only to finally make it out into the terminal to find the perfumes and jewellery concessions have found it quite possible to be fully staffed up, all having had to be fully security cleared, of course, being airside, and doing blow all business.