Manchester Airport has announced that it will reopen its shuttered Terminal 3 on Friday, to deal with “the increased demand following the easing of travel restrictions“.
The terminal partially reopened on 27 March, but will reopen in full on 22 April, including previously closed shops such as Boots, Costa and WH Smith as well as the airside Duty Free section.
The terminal is used by Aurigny, British Airways, Eastern Airways, Flybe, Iberia Express, Loganair and Ryanair.
Airport management is still urging Manchester passengers to arrive three hours before their flight in case of slow-moving queues.
This week it has published several social media posts with the tagline “Take care”, advising customers to “prepare your hand luggage for security screening” including removing electronic items and separating liquids into a clear plastic bag.
While this advice will be familiar to many flyers, several UK airports appear to be raising awareness of things that could slow down check-in or security queues.
Manchester, the third-busiest airport in the UK after Heathrow and Gatwick, has seen extremely long waits for security over the past months, with some passengers missing flights and other departures delayed while waiting for people caught up in the congestion.
Customers reported missing out on thousands spent on holidays, as well as failing to receive their baggage and spotting piles of abandoned suitcases around the airport.
Two weeks ago, the chief executive of Manchester Airports Group, Charlie Cornish, was forced to apologise to passengers for the “queues and congestion they’ve experienced in recent weeks”.
In an open letter published online, he wrote: “Having endured the worst crisis in our 84-year history, I can assure you that there is no one more pleased to see passengers back in our terminals than we are.
“We had to cut costs just to survive – it was as simple as that. We reduced expenditure wherever we could, and as a last resort we had to offer colleagues the option of voluntary redundancy because of the uncertainty about when international travel would resume.”
Days earlier, the airport’s managing director Karen Smart had resigned.
Several UK airports as well as airlines including British Airways and easyJet have struggled to resume normal service this spring, as the country sees the biggest surge of international travellers in two years.
In its press relase about the terminal reopening, Manchester Airport management flagged up the current vacancies at the hub, saying, “As part of its recovery hundreds of jobs are still available across the airport site to meet the increased passenger demand,” and giving an application link.
Today, more than 100 flights were cancelled to and from the UK’s busiest airports, Heathrow and Gatwick, by British Airways and easyJet respectively.
The airlines cite staff shortages caused by sickness as the cause.
