Flight queues (And a media rant)

You may remember me asking about Spain details. Thanks for all your help, I'm back now. I had a lovely time. Thanks for asking. To confirm, armed in terms of paperwork, only with a passport and an electronic PDF version of my Covid certificate downloaded from the NHS Passport App, all was good.

I was starting to believe the headlines of the press about queues, and so gave plenty of time at Leeds Bradford airport. On arriving I was horrified to see the queue for security snake through the building, past the Jet2 section and outside to the main entrance. If you know Leeds/Bradford, that's a long queue. Now, I understand they had a fire alarm that morning, so don't know if that contributed or not.

Anyway, Ryanair being Ryanair, and them willing to take your last penny off you, had been spamming me with extra baggage, seat reservations, more cases, insurances, transfers, priority boarding and Fast Track (for security) whilst trying to check in. I went in the app, bought Fast Track and saved a **** ton of anxiousness that the queue would have caused. £5 each.

On the eve of my return, I saw a British headline (admittedly, I didn't read the article) about Spanish airports in chaos and can't cope. Without priority, we walked straight through and had literally completed boarding within a minute.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love a queue, for I am British. However, they don't half make me anxious and frustrate me.

A little rant about the media now - would it be too much to ask that they do some research rather than reporting, as fact, what Karen and Kevin wrote on Facebook?

 

That isn't laziness. It's a deliberate tactic to post clickbait news and distance themselves from the comments made within the article by pinning it on Karen and kevin

 

When we tried to purchase Fast Track at LBA it wasn’t available. Became obvious why when we realised they were pulling people through it whose flights were due to leave. Chaotic for us but pleased you managed to do better. Went through Manchester week last Saturday and, although the queues were horrendous, Jet2 staff seemed pretty competent and got us through bag drop in around an hour. Security wasn’t as bad as I’d expected and we were through in about 20 minutes. The two foreign airports, Malaga and Dubrovnik, were fine.

 

Im flying from Manchester with jet2 on Monday, doing the midnight bag drop off the day before so staying at Premier Inn near airport, I'm praying for the kids sake they don't f**k this up.

 

i think kevin and karen were in our check in queue in march, honestly it took 30 mins to get them through because all they had were their passports, not any other data on when/where they were going, mobiles didn't have easy to reach data, no covid type stuff on them, yet the press blame the airport staff
maybe they are crap most of the time but all folk called kevin and karen should be banned from flying ;-)
your truly, k orky

 

What am I getting blamed for now???

 

We are at LBA Sunday, I fully expect to queue but I do think that the main stream media sensationalism is designed to keep Brits in the country.

 

Fingers crossed for you!

 

Report back on your experience. You may have changed your opinion

 

The queues outside the passport office were also a joy to behold - walked past it on the way to an appointment yesterday and there must have been 200 outside waiting to get in. Whole country seems to be in absolute chaos t the moment

 

No, that was brexit!

 

I'm at LBA in 10 days..would be good if ya could report ya experience at the airport pls mate....ah did Manchester in April and it only took 2 hrs from dropping car to departure lounge despite the media frenzy..

 

I went to Amsterdam in March.

It took us 2 hours to get through security on the way out.

On the way back it took 3 hours to get through Security at Schiphol and over an hour at passport control in Manchester.

It definitely wasn’t sensationalism or media hype on that day. I’m surprised nobody got seriously hurt.

 

It's not you, it's me and my sister.

 

We sailed from Harwich to Hook of Holland 5th April, absolutely no holdups at either end apart from a long chat with the passport guy in Holland who persuaded us to visit Roterdam.....

 

Sat in LBA now. Checked cases in last night with Jet2 twilight check-in. Recommended!! But then again I live close enough to make it worthwhile.
Got here 05.30, security crew snaked twice round building, round perimetre of Jet2 hall and outside main entrance. Seemed horrendous, we were told 2 hours, but to be fair it kept moving and the staff were good at calling out imminent flights, so that kept whittling the numbers down. I guess we were 90 mins max from outside start to getting through scanners. At least it wasn't raining.
Currently sat in scruffy dirty Costa for my caffeine fix and hoping the flight is on time at 8.15.

 

Thanks for the heads up mate..hope ya have a good holiday

 

Arrived at LBA, no queues at all!
Although even though the airline said arrive 3 hours before your flight, bag drop doesn’t open until 2 hours before!

 

Why would he send you there? To see the chuckle brothers? (Another for ST)

 

I went on a lads trip to Marbella a few years back and one of my not so bright mates got chatting to a waitress in a restaurant. Her English was very good despite it being clear that it wasn’t her first language. So he asked her where she was from, ‘I am from Rotterdam’ she replied. ‘Bloody hell’ he said, ‘I was working in Wath last week. Do you know it?’.
Genuinely.