The aviation industry's recent struggles have been well-documented, but Liverpool John Lennon Airport has appeared to buck the trend.
Many larger airports across the United Kingdom have had a difficult first full summer after the end of covid restrictions. Locally, Manchester Airport has been hit with complaints about long queues (at times stretching into car parks), delays and lost luggage throughout the spring and summer.
Chaotic scenes have beset its operations this year - with many branding the delays and the general experience as "shambolic". Passengers travelling through Manchester Airport are still being warned to expect "longer than usual" queues at the airport. It has cited staffing issues and a spike in international travel after the pandemic as the primary reasons for its struggles.
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The ECHO reported earlier this month that Ian Costigan, Chief Operating Officer of Manchester Airport, said passengers would see an "improved experience" by the autumn with the airport in a "much better place by next summer". He added that 92% of passengers got through security in under 30 minutes in July.
However, Liverpool John Lennon Airport has had a "fairly normal summer", according to operating director Paul Staples. That has not been lost on its social media team, who have sent a few knowing remarks to its counterpart down the M62.
Last month, when news emerged that Cristiano Ronaldo was hoping to leave Manchester United this summer, Liverpool Airport tweeted: "Itching to get out of Manchester, but want to avoid the queues? We happily invite Cristiano to try the North West's Faster, Easier, Friendlier Airport, where he can connect on to Munich or Lisbon with Lufthansa, or fly Ryanair direct to Paris or Rome."
The difference becomes apparent in the latest guidance from the two airports. Liverpool Airport suggests that passengers arrive two hours before departure, whereas Manchester suggests three.
This difference between the two has not gone unnoticed - a quick glance at social media will show many people praising the ease and speed of passing through security at the Speke-based airport.
Paul Staples told the ECHO that throughout July, it took passengers an average of 12 minutes to get through security. He said that the airport's successes this year are down to advanced planning and speed in resolving issues that hung over from the pandemic.
The airport pencilled in Easter 2022 as the time when foreign travel may return to a semblance of normality and began recruiting and preparing to meet that date. Paul said this was a gamble, but one which has paid off.
He said: "The main challenges for airports around the country have been well-documented. First of all, getting the start date right (out of the pandemic) wasn’t easy. It was heavily-linked to the stop-start activities of the government - they gave aviation hope that we were actually starting, people recruited, they got shops, concessions starting to re-open and then they stopped again on a couple of occasions.
"But I think that at the beginning of this year, some of the bigger airports found it more costly to take a gamble and go all in for an Easter start, whereas the smaller regional airports like ourselves could probably take that chance a little bit easier, in terms of the financial risks involved.
"We sat as a group in November 2021 and said ‘let’s assume that Easter is going to be the first proper start and let’s staff up for Easter’. We pretty much started recruiting at the turn of the year, with that in mind.
"One of the other beneficial things we had at Liverpool was that we took the view very early on that we wanted to come out of the pandemic with as much of the skills and expertise that we had on site still with us. So, we didn’t make the vast swathing redundancies that other airports did. We made 20-30 people redundant in the Liverpool Airport team and that was it."
As well as being central to its recovery and the driving force behind the airport's ability to cope with increased passenger numbers, Paul sees staffing as key to its lack of queues at security.
He explained: "On a weekly basis in the summer, we see between 80,000 and 90,000 passengers come through the terminal. Typically, prior to the pandemic, that number would have been 105,000 to 110,000 - so it gives you some idea that we’re not all the way back to the way we were, but we’re fast approaching that number.
"Pre-covid, 98% of our passengers went through security in under 10 minutes. We were hitting that on a regular basis.
"Because of the staffing levels, we’ve said that we’re not going to pressure them to hit that rate, but we do expect people to get through in under 20. We think that’s fair given the challenges that we’re all facing. All the way through July, we averaged a 12 minute process. When we publish those times, we measure them more realistically - we publish a time that’s measured during our peak flows, whereas some airports publish a time which is measured across 24 hours."
He continued: "From a very early stage, we spoke to all key stakeholders - handling agents, security providers, the people who assist passengers with disabilities and we agreed a recruitment process that began at the start of this year. They joined us and they recruited people at a job fair that we set up.
"We were all on the same page from January and we all committed to that Easter restart. At the bigger airports, I think that those relationships are likely to be more fragmented than they are at the smaller airports.
"We were able to call five or six managers around a table and say - this is the target, this is the aim, we’re going to be ready for Easter - and we asked what they needed from us to make that happen. We worked very closely with them from the back end of last year."
Despite the praise that Liverpool Airport has won recently, Paul does not see it as being in competition with larger airports around the country. He said: "We’re delighted with that rhetoric, but we’ve always known our place, we are not directly trying to compete with Manchester, because they fly to a lot more destinations than us and they offer long-haul.
"But if we fly somewhere that people want to go, we want people from the North West to pick Liverpool as their airport of choice. That’s always been the aim and that continues to be the aim.
"This summer has probably helped us no end in that respect - all the media coming about the service that people have been provided at Liverpool has been very positive, so it can only be a good thing."
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