It's hard to handle diverted flights when you have no staff to do so
This in itself begs the question of how things have gotten so bad.
Why has pretty much every other major airport (I'm talking in the 3m plus category) git the spare capacity to handle a short notice 'en mass' divert situation without too much trouble, yet Manchester, supposedly an airport of over 40,000 direct on site staff cannot handle even a couple of diverted flights?
There is the worry of bad
PR, but, Those incidents are the exception, not the rule. One KLM pilot years ago threatens to pop a slide and 7 years later you are still nervous to accept anything.
BHX regularly handle mass diverts, there are rarely very bad stories emerging from those actions. One or 2 bad stories, but not enough to loose any sleep on.
LPL, primarily a low cost airport, therefore must have the matching staffing levels to handle the lower costs paid by the airlines, and LPL can often take in more diverts than sometimes it's scheduled flying programme for that day!
NCL, GLA, EDI, the list goes on. Even PIK, with just a few Ryanair flights can handle multiple diverts.
So, the question, why are MAN's staffing levels so bad, that it is almost an anomaly in the UK that it barely has enough staff to cover its programme and a single E-Jet would have cause mass pandemonium?
Something has gone fundamentally wrong in this scenario. I'm not for one second suggesting staff are recruited to be on stand by for diverts, however, why can other airports with similar flight structures to MAN cope so well, whereas MAN fails before the fog has even formed by slapping on a no div NOTAM.
Something's not right......