Manchester has been ranked as Britain’s worst airport for the third year running amid passenger complaints about a lack of seats, queues and prices in its shops.
Which?, the consumer rights organisation, ranked all of Britain’s airports after surveying its 5,000 members about their experiences at the hubs over the past year. The top airports were Liverpool, London City and Norwich. Manchester came bottom, followed by Belfast and Luton.
Manchester Airport said the Which? survey was “extremely disappointing” and raised questions about the way it was carried out.
Rory Boland, editor of Which? Travel, said: “Our survey found many of the biggest airports fall at the basics – with passengers often unhappy about the availability of toilets and seats, and reporting long queues at times … flogging fast passes and filling terminals with retail spaces and airport lounges is a money spinner but, judging by our results, it’s not what passengers need.”
A separate poll earlier this year by YouGov found that Manchester was the UK’s fourth most popular airport, coming in behind Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. The contrasting findings raise questions about the subjectivity of airport passenger experiences and how they ought to be measured.
Which? asked members to rank the country’s 29 busiest airports based on how they felt about such issues as seating, prices in shops, toilets, and queues at security and at passport control.
“With some of its ‘moving walkways’ out of action since 2021, and repair works still ongoing, as well as widespread complaints about queues and lack of seating, many of those surveyed who were reliant on Manchester Airport for its range of international connections reported unhappy experiences,” said Which?.
In contrast, a YouGov survey carried out in June found that Manchester was the fourth most popular airport in the UK – albeit with an approval rating of 36 per cent. Heathrow, which came on top of that poll, scored 48 per cent.
A Manchester Airport spokesman said the Which? survey was “extremely disappointing” and “uninformative”. “We have been in dialogue with Which? over the way it conducts its annual airport survey for some time. We’ve raised specific concerns about the metrics they use, their sampling and more.”
The spokesman said the airport disputed the Which? finding that security queues felt long to passengers, saying 97 per cent passed through pre-flight screening within 15 minutes.
