BA moving terminals at MAN from Oct 7th

[mitchja]

Just a heads up for anyone using BA domestic flights from (or to) MAN. From Tuesday October 7th, BA are moving from T3 into T2. BA check-in closing times are also changing from the current 45mins before departure to 60mins before departure due to the longer walks involved in T2. No confirmation yet as to which gates BA will be using in T2.

There's also currently no news on which lounge they will use yet either...rumours are it will be the Escape lounge until the new shared 'Premium' lounge opens (which is going where VS originally planned their Clubhouse to be next door to the Escape lounge).

Once this new Premium lounge does open again rumours are that VS will also switch to this new lounge as well as the 1903 lounge branding is disappearing and that space will become 1 large Escape lounge.

On the lounge front, it sounds like a crappy move. Escape (the cheaper option) gets all the apron views, new "premium" lounge gets views of nothing.

On the Emirates front, it seems their move to T2 is 18th November - word on the street is their T2 lounge is behind schedule. Could be interesting to see what they do for their J / F pax / Skywards with status. Only one of the 3 daily flights has F.

[mitchja]

With the new pier now built, I suspect none of the current T2 lounges will get great airfield views anymore. Still better though than the old T2 lounges which either had no windows at all or had windows that faced the other side of the airport.

I believe the new EK lounge will be located in the new pier along with at least 1 x A380 compatible gate at the far end.

Given where T2 is relative to the rest of the airfield, you'll probably never get as great airfield views as you could potentially get elsewhere.

As for EK, it would technically be a move back to T2. It used to operate from there for years and moved to T1 ahead of commencing A380 operations as that was where they built the A380 gate. Think there was also a space reason why they couldn't build an A380 gate at T2 all those years ago too, though can't remember. I guess EK will move when they have to whether their lounge is ready or not as MAN plan to do away with T1 in its current form in the not too distant future.

I can't say I'll miss T1 much as it's showing its age in places and always felt cramped for the number of passengers it handles, especially after its 2006/2007 refurbishment. I just hope with T1 going they take the opportunity to make T3 more user-friendly in the process, especially departures.

[mitchja]

As for EK, it would technically be a move back to T2. It used to operate from there for years and moved to T1 ahead of commencing A380 operations as that was where they built the A380 gate. Think there was also a space reason why they couldn't build an A380 gate at T2 all those years ago too, though can't remember. I guess EK will move when they have to whether their lounge is ready or not as MAN plan to do away with T1 in its current form in the not too distant future.

I can't say I'll miss T1 much as it's showing its age in places and always felt cramped for the number of passengers it handles, especially after its 2006/2007 refurbishment. I just hope with T1 going they take the opportunity to make T3 more user-friendly in the process, especially departures.

Wasn't there a whole issue with the gates being built too close together to accommodate wide-bodies after they built the original T2? I'm sure I read that somewhere?

T1 isn't actually the bad now as it's had a reasonable amount of renovations over the years. T3 is by far the worst terminal at MAN. It's an utter dump with its badly configured boarding gates and total lack of seating areas. It wasn't even a terminal in its own right as that space was original T1. They made things worse when they closed the internal walkway between T1 and T3 completely cutting T3 off.

Apparently the new biometric enabled domestic arrival process isn't going well at T2 with EI who recently moved their remaining short haul ops into T2. Pax coming off an arriving flight from DUB last week where held in immigration for over 2 hours as the biometric and e-gates all failed. MAN blamed EI and EI blamed MAN. That doesn't bode well with BA's upcoming move!!

Yes, the spacing wasn’t ideal for accommodating two widebodies side-by-side. Lots of historical photos of the old T2 show a mixture of narrowbodies and widebodies together, with a gap of a gate where two widebodies are. Not a good use of capacity.

As for T3’s past, it’s funny you should say that because in the style of ‘Back to the Future’, MAN announced today that Ryanair flights will check in from the upstairs desks in T1 from 21st October and walk through to T3 via T1 security and part of T1 airside departures. Basically, it’s a precursor to that being the new T3 departures entrance once the rest of T1 closes and everyone else moves to T2.

https://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/fli ... s/ryanair/