Great Outbound, Shocking Inbound
Just got back from AUH on Etihad and, once again, found the inbound experience at MAN to be terrible. I really like the improvements outbound, the queue for security moved at a constant walking pace when i left, a speed i have never seen in any other airport, and the revamped T1 departures is pretty good all-round.
However, inbound is still very poor. Firstly, we departed into Pier B and had to take the down-the-stairs-up-the-stairs route across the outbound pax. One passenger fell on the steps. We then took the narrow corridor with hoardings on one side towards immigration. I say towards immigration because the queue started before we got anywhere near the immigration desks. It was so long that pax were merging from two routes into a melee of a queue that was about 15 people wide. We were then patronized by firstly, the immigration officer coming and moving all non-EU pax to a much, much, much smaller queue inside the hall and then the automated message over the tannoy telling us about high demand and all the desks being manned. What i don't get is if the airport has lost 4-5million pax pa, why are the queues still this long? What would 'high demand' have looked like at the airports peak? Furthermore, the man from immigration then came along and told us more staff had been put on the desks. So the tannoy was lying to us when it said all the desks were manned.
After queuing, getting my bag was swift as it was already going around but then we had to squeeze through the U-Turn in the corridor between the baggage hall and the arrivals area. One person caught their bag on a corner, another paused to look at the duty free and the rest of us got blocked!
When you then get into the arrivals area, the route through the waiting families to the exit is too narrow and full of 'stuff' and if you want to get the train (like i do), you have to go outside to go back inside which is annoying if it's raining and you don't have a coat because you don't need one in Abu Dhabi !
I know the immigration officers are not the fault of the airport but get it sorted MAN. A new Pier B is a must if it is to serve A380's and that should be just the start.