Oh Dear Manchester

Arrived back from mco Sunday on vs074. After half an hour waiting for baggage an announcement was made that it would arrive in 15mins and the delay was due to the early arrival of the aircraft !! I would not mind if several flights were being unloaded but the baggage hall was otherwise empty. When I questioned ground staff I was told its all Virgin's fault-they should stick to the schedule - laughable.

They are correct.
The way manpower is coordinated at airports now means there is no slack, every minute each staff member is accounted for what flight they should be dealing with and what they should be doing, when am aircraft is late or early there isn't the staff sitting around doing nothing to jump into action. Especially at that time when many Atlantic flights will be landing.

Accountants rule the world....

And that's what I' moaning about I suppose. Someone has decided that its Ok to save a few bob and have grumpy passengers with tired children hanging about a desserted baggage hall for 3/4 of an hour or so ( no sign of all those other flights btw ). This is supposed to be a service industry and airports have to cope with varying schedules and diversions etc- it would be interesting to know just how much I have saved on my ticket at the cost of this inflexibility.

[mitchja]

It's always someone else's fault isn't it.

MAN airport is quite frankly a disgrace now with many people working there who clearly don't want to be there. There far too many staff at MAN with an attitude now. It's gone downhill fast over the last year or so. I've no idea why but there's clearly something different now. Maybe down to new management or something but what ever the reason, it's wrong to take the frustrations out on pax.

I don't enjoy travelling through MAN these days now.

Mitchja, never experienced any great problem through Manchester.
Wherever you travel from there are 'off days' and grumpy staff.
Lets see if they can export their experiences and levels of service to Stanstead?

Never had any problems at Manchester. Would rather go from there than Gatwick/Heathrow.Far to busy for me.

Last time but one, when we flew into Manchester from MCO, we sat for an hour awaiting our PE luggage while people from Economy collected their luggage and were probably home by the time we collected our luggage. It's the longest time we've waited there but it seems that there is no priority given to the luggage on the (one) carousel.
As Upper & PE Pax are usually at the carousel first, it doesn't make sense to put the economy luggage through first. Maybe I'm missing something.

Katie

[preiffer]

so - it's not like the guys in MAN knew the plane was due inbound a little earlier than schedule for.... oooohhh... maybe 6-7 HOURS at least before landing, is it?

Oh, wait...


It's not like a plane can "sneak up" on an airport. Pathetic excuse if ever I heard one, and no process should be SO rigid when it comes to the travel industry that it cannot accommodate MINOR alterations to a schedule.

[honey lamb]

As Upper & PE Pax are usually at the carousel first, it doesn't make sense to put the economy luggage through first. Maybe I'm missing something.

Katie

When this happens it is generally because the bins have been wrongly loaded at the departing airport and the economy bins have gone in last instead of first. The baggage handlers have only one goal and that is to empty the baggage area as quickly as possible before moving on to the next flight. They aren't going to go through the niceties of checking the cabin of each bin and holding back the economy bins; they are just going to offload them as quickly as possible.

[preiffer]

As Upper & PE Pax are usually at the carousel first, it doesn't make sense to put the economy luggage through first. Maybe I'm missing something.

Katie

When this happens it is generally because the bins have been wrongly loaded at the departing airport and the economy bins have gone in last instead of first. The baggage handlers have only one goal and that is to empty the baggage area as quickly as possible before moving on to the next flight. They aren't going to go through the niceties of checking the cabin of each bin and holding back the economy bins; they are just going to offload them as quickly as possible.

Maybe it's the baggage handlers at the departing airport applying the same (insular) logic then, which causes the problem in the first place...?

The trouble is that the carousel quickly fills up with economy PAX luggage and when the Pax are not there yet to collect them, the luggage just keeps going round and round on the carousel. The handlers must run out of space to put any more baggage on the belt until the first lot are removed; meanwhile the early passengers stand around waiting.

Katie