Manchester Airport 28th May
 

For those of you operating out of Manchester on May 28th this is the date for the the Champions League Final at Old Trafford Manchester.
200 extra slots have been allocated for the the influx of supporters from Italy/Spain,with the possibility of the second runway being closed for parking!!.
3 tonnes extra on the fuel please!!.

NJR.

I can't wait :D

Manchester airport will have major staffing problems during the champions league final

My partner works for MAPlc and has received a 40% pay cut recently as have her colleagues in security, car parks and other sections.

The airport are asking for volunteers to work on the 28th May offering double time o/t as aposed to single time o/t plus £100
but as you can imagine 99% of the workforce have stuck 2 fingers up at the airport.

my partner is working that night and is dreading it.

What ever the airport offers financially will not be enough, after the way they have been treated by the airport.

To those who have stuck two fingers up at MAN airport plc i say...
Good on you!! After reading that the security staff have been reduced dramatically whilst the big cheeses accept MASSIVE pay bonuses (£thousands!!!) i say this is a good opportunity to show the bosses at MAplc what aristocrats they are being!

I realise this may affect my flying via delays however i will not moan as i support the staff who have been blatently messed about by the airport plc.

Good luck
I will watch to see what happens

Dave

LPL & LBA
 

Astute charter operators may also consider using the above; both were used to good effect during Euro 2000.

Manchester airport will be in trouble on 28 may, they want over 100 security staff to volunteer for overtime but as scoot has stated they have got no chance.

Because of the bad pay and conditions at MAPlc more experienced staff are leaving all the time. The airport can't recruit new staff fast enough to replace them.

(Wonder Why ?)

The airport is looking at an extra 40,000 pax on top of the normal 50,000 summer pax

Should be interesting, maybe the fat cat bosses Teale, Spooner and Muirhead will help out.

Everyone always talks about the MAPLC staff as being screwed about, and I agree that they are, but what about the ground staff specifically at the handling agents? Last I checked, we were some of the lowest payed ground workers in the civilised world and many of our conditions arent all that great. Last I checked, MAPLC security staff and car park attendants arent out there turning aircraft? ALL the handling agent staffs are SEVERELY undermanned and I think we are gonna end up looking like a monkey screwing a football on 28/05/03 if we arent careful!!

CAINANUK

You are right everbody is getting shafted at the airport from what I hear.

There is only one way to change things and that is for all the workers at the various companies to walk out and shut the place down.

Hit where it hurts.

IN THE POCKET !

The trouble is the airlines want the handling done for nothing with the best customer service, it just dosn't happen that way, you get what you pay for !

I believe Ringway Handling are balloting their members now because MAPlc have decided to cut their wages again.

I think you have got to view the situation from the view point of MAPlc. A few years ago they had a virtual monopoly in the North of England and could afford to charge airlines as much as they could get away with and pay staff extremely good wages.

Times have changed. The explosion in LCCs has seen passengers tempted away to other airports. I recall a number of years ago the airports projections envisaged well in excess of 20m passengers by 2003. Consider wher it is currently at.

Something has to be done, costs have to be reduced if MAN is not to whither and die. The reduction of staff and wages is an obvious way of achieving this. The noticable lack of capital investment since the opening of Runway 2 is another.

I am sure the board of MAPlc would love 23m passengers in 2003 with an annual growth of 10% and happy well paid staff. The way the aviation market has evolved this is not going to happen. Who would have thought that ten years ago MAN would be fighting with LPL for passengers?

Despite being owned by the local authorities of Greater Manchester the airport is still a business. Businesses have to make profits to survive. MAPlc has finally woken up to the fact that it cannot remain aloof from the LCC market and is having to reduce it's cost base to compete in this sector.

As uncomfortable as this is for the employees it is unfortunately a fact of life in the world we now live in.

So try to give MAPlc some credit for trying adapt to the new business climate in civil aviation.

SISYPHUS1965

You have to take into account 11 september for the reduction in passengers.

Can you tell me how many airports in the uk have cut their security staff and wages post 11 sept ?

THE ANSWER IS NON except Manchester

BAA pay their security staff nationwide in excess £20k pa
in the USA they Federalised security taking it away from the airports, airlines and private companies as they could not be trusted, as they operated in the 'lowest bidders wins'.

MAPlc cut the wages of their staff, but don't forget the directors Muirhead, Teale, Spooner and the rest of them received over 50% pay rises Muirhead got over £90,000 pay rise

I think you will find passenger growth at the airport was below projections before September 11th. Growth was slower than expected as a direct result of Easyjet at LPL.

Whatever private business sector you look in there is a huge variation in wages paid for comparable jobs. That is free market capitalism for you - supply and demand.

As far as the directors huge pay rises are concerned I have to agree with you. It is a symptom of the greedy "fat cat" culture which prevails in the boardrooms of most British companies. The attitude is
- costs have been cut by £xxxxxxxx, job well done, pay rises all round!

Its all very well us talking about the extra 200+ planes coming in, The problem is who's transferring the punters off the planes to the coaches. Plus do we have enough steps for the a/c the answer is I think not. FACT we do not have enough coaches for the transfers. Lets hope these fans dont have any baggage, because if they do god help that piece of cr*p they have the nerve to call a baggage system. It failed again the other day, and the almighty overlords( maplc ) had the nerve to say there was nothing wrong with it.
Going back to the football flights u cannot blame people not wanting to work for the airport bearing in mind of the after taste that the recent shafting has left in the mouths of the workers. The city of Manchester should be proud on the night of the 28th as host country for this event Its just a shame that those penny pinching lowlifes who run the airport have left a bitter taste in the workforce.......


All we can say is sorry


But when u work for a company that runs every thing on a shoe-string. plus lets not forget more changes are on the way


Baggage handlers are in for yet another shafting.

these poor sods got shafted over ten years ago and now they face yet another shafting by the airport.

When will it all stop.

Don't see what all the fuss is. GLA coped easily when the Champion's League Final was played at Hampden Park last year. There is plenty of space in MAN I doubt they will park on 24L.

If they've made cost savings on ground staff how come they can afford to pay a guy to stand by the passport control in T3 and shout "Passports open and ready". I've passed through there maybe 12 times this year and he's always there; I've never seen him do anything else. How do other airports cope without this essential service!

Yes they can
 

I will not make any comment with regards to the security issue, however I understand that all of the other issues raised have been taken into account.

Handling agents are, I believe, bringing in - if required - additional equipment for the period in question. I also have heard that extra coaches are being hired for the occasion.

The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. There are certain people who seem to use this site for what appear to be political reasons to knock the airport. I am not employed by the authority and take no sides, however I have seen the airport grow from the days when I was a kid and visited in the mid-1950's. If the authority screws up then let the people responsible have egg on their face and face the wrath of many people. If all goes well then give credit where credit is due.

Lets think positively and try to make the day as smooth as possible for all those who will be passing through the airport.

Cheers

Scottie Dog

I've seen the plans and R2 is definitely earmarked as a parking lot. Expect some congestion and delays on that day.

The plans for handling and parking are certainly ambitious but considering the Heath-Robinsonesque ideas used for parking guidance used in T2 (traffic lights requiring a human who is qualified to operate them) and T1 (mirrors and contortions), visitors to Wythenshaw Municipal on the 28th are going to find it 'interesting' to say the least.

As for the rest of us who have to operate regular scheduled flights, don't expect anything different from a normal day with single runway ops. The guys and girls in the tower will no doubt provide their usual excellent service, hampered only by ground ops jobsworths trying to dictate nonsensical directives in order to justify their employment. :rolleyes:

One thing is for sure on the 28th, Our department will be looking after our usual schd flights first then meeting any football flights after. ( thats what normally happeneds anyway)

Look after those who pay our wages.

I doubt youll see any of us running around, unless its in the opposite direction :O

To be fair, even though AFAIK they are underpaid and overworked, I have found the ground ops staff at MAN to be among the most efficient I have seen anywhere- usually living up to the high standards exhibited by MAN ATC. Sure, they have their bad days, but their performance on a bad day is roughly on a par with everyday ops at many mainland European airports...

Half of you bleating on about what a sham it will turn out to be,I bet it will all run like clockwork!!
As for there not being enough coaches for the fans, I was up in Glasgow last year and the coaches transporting the fans to and from the stadium were from all over the country including Devon!!:ok:

think you will find that gla would never have coped if they had had all the flights which arrived in Scotland ovetr those 3-4 days as Edi had approx 20 extra flights if I remember correctly:rolleyes:

Hugger