Time for reflection?
Okay, okay. There has been lots of gossip and guessing and complaining and .......
Firstly to the state of the terminals. I am not a frequent traveller nowadays, however I do visit the land side of the terminals every couple of weeks. The other evening I walked over to T1 & T3 to see exactly what I could find at fault and here are my observations:
Toilets - in general fairly clean conditions. Taps had been left running and bottles of pop/cartons left on the floors. Sodden tissues in one of the basins in the WC at the end of the T1 checkin. Now the fact that taps are left running is down to the lazyness of passengers/visitors. The tissues are agin a fault of the same people who are too lazy to even think of depositing them into one of the toilets. The problem with bottles will never go away until we get the return of bins - and even that will probably never solve the problem as our sense of values does not include using a litter bin (how often do we see people just dropping rubbish when there is a depository within just a few feet of them). Finally all of the toilets have signs asking us to report problems to the airport - do we do that? No we just complain on forums like Pprune.
Signs for a new domestic security area in T were in evidence, but I have seen nothing mentioned on here. Has it opened yet? If it has, will this replace the current main entry to airside. By making this change, how will it effect the space available where the old security check area. Will this solve the problem mentioned by an earlier poster with regard to the opening of Boots on the airside?
Escalators, travellators - shock horry, all working!
Now to the question of our dear friends at Jet2 and easyJet.
Jet2 do appear to have 'had their time'. I hear rumors that they will be downsizing to 6 aircraft and is it pure co-incidence that the airport's incentive of low fees only applies for 3 years on most new routes. Having started with a bigger bang than bmibaby, it is a shame that Jet2 appear to be in retreat.
easyJet is an interesting story. Despite the rather silly post by 'easy manager' in which he says that easyJet will sell their slots, and as already started these slots are not for sale in anycase (check the ACL website for more details), there has to be some truth in the story of their pending arrival. I have heard a lot of the stories that have been doing the rounds, and have seen certain paperwork which would appear to confirm these facts. This is the second time that easyJet have apparantly applied for slots at Manchester, and they will have done their homework into whether they have an interest before making such applications. Whether they take up any opportunity will be of great interest. Whilst I would prefer to see the continuation of a majority of services by scheduled 'IATA' carriers, I am also a realist and accept that times have changed over the years.
Now let's see what does happen in the coming months.
Scottie Dog