When the coronavirus pandemic first hit two years ago and global travel became a distant memory, there were genuine fears for the future of Manchester Airport, whose growth over the last 50 years is perhaps the most obvious incarnation of our city's ambition and renaissance. Thousands of flights were grounded, staff were furloughed and large parts of the airport were virtually mothballed.
Passenger numbers plummeted from 80,000 a day to just a few hundred, a decline which would eventually lead to more than 2,000 redundancies among both MAG employees and those working for outside agencies. With the turbulence of lockdown rattling the travel sector, just two months after we were all ordered to stay at home the ten councils of Greater Manchester agreed a multi-million pound loan to save the airport.
It was a package worth £260m to help Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports which are all owned by Manchester Airports Group (MAG). As shareholders in this group, the ten Greater Manchester councils have all profited from the airport's success - to the tune of more than £600m in the five years before the pandemic brought the pay-outs to an abrupt halt.
But the ravages of Covid, followed by a rapid recovery, mean those taxpayers are no longer benefitting from the annual windfalls are among the same people reporting chaotic experiences at the besieged airport in a series of stories to the Manchester Evening News. As passenger numbers surged back to up to 60,000 a day, there were reports of huge queues for check-in and security snaking out from terminals into car parks, with some holidaymakers ultimately missing their flights.
Baggage delays and crowded check-in halls, run by outside agencies, were the subject of more fury from passengers, who described their ordeal as 'a complete nightmare'. There were reports of people abandoning their luggage after long waits at reclaim halls following return flights - and baggage handlers have said they're under 'more stress than ever before'. Video footage even emerged of grey plastic security trays piled up on top of each other as irate passengers jostled to get through security.
On Tuesday afternoon, amid calls for management to 'get a grip', Karen Smart, managing director, stepped down to pursue 'fresh career opportunities' in the south of England. Ian Costigan, already a senior member of staff, will take up the role of interim MD and the Manchester Evening News has requested an interview to discuss a 'recovery plan' which will hopefully ease passenger pain.
One of the challenges now faced by Mr Costigan is that passengers' good will has arguably been diminishing for years. It should be noted that, although currently extreme, queues at Manchester Airport are not a new phenomenon. People hated the introduction of drop-off charges in 2018, their increase since - which the airport has explained variously as both a means to ease congestion but also as a way to 'recover' from the pandemic - and the fact that all types of parking are among the most expensive in the country.
Passengers questioned being charged £1 to use a baggage trolley in 2012. They resented the introduction of the same charge for plastic zip bags into which liquids, gels and pastes had to be stowed before going through security, although was dropped in 2014. The airport defended all these charges at the time.
While it's been argued that such charges allow the hub to offer better rates to airlines, which are passed on to passengers in ticket prices, their customers have not always seen it that way, and it's perhaps no wonder many have been queuing up to criticise the airport this week. Some senior politicians have been quick to join them. Notably, eight of the ten councils who own the airport on our behalves have not provided comments addressing the problems at the airport, despite invitations from the M.E.N. to do so.
Blackley and Broughton MP Graham Stringer, who led Manchester Council during the 1990s and who was chairman of the airport board from 1996-97, was among a few politicians to break ranks. He told the M.E.N : "It pains me to see the chaos and lack of service to customers that now seems to categorise Manchester Airport. The current management need to get a grip or get out."
Despite problems reported as far back as Christmas, It was only after it emerged firefighters were being asked to man baggage conveyors amid calls for volunteers from the workforce to help to manage queues that - now outgoing - managing director Karen Smart finally admitted the transport hub was struggling with staff shortages amid a surge in international travel. In a statement last month, she also warned of disruption for weeks to come.
In response, the airport has embarked on a major recruitment drive with managers even exploring whether university students could be hired to temporarily bolster the workforce. They have also pointed to how the Government's last-minute lifting of restrictions has hindered their ability to prepare, while a look across the travel sector as a whole reveals Manchester Airport is not alone in its struggles. Heathrow is also the subject of 'travel chaos' reports due to staff shortages and the ongoing onslaught of Covid is impacting airlines' ability to fulfil their flight schedules. EasyJet has had to cancel more than a thousand flights in recent days.
'Too slow, not enough pay'
Despite this, Manchester's escalating problems have led senior councillor, Manchester's Pat Karney, to point to a 'failure in management' and said the airport's reputation was 'nosediving' as a result.
There are also questions around how, after being so vocal in their calls for the Government to end restrictions, hub bosses could then have been blindsided when their pleas were answered. One local government source said furloughed staff had left the business, while a recruitment drive should have been ramped up sooner. They argued that by waiting for, rather than predicting, a rapid recovery, bosses had been 'too slow' to respond, angering both the region's leaders and businesses.
A case in point lies in security recruitment. Last month there were 400 vacancies. Even when these roles are filled, it it will take up to a month for these recruits to undergo training and the security clearance process. In the meantime, their bosses are resorting to boosting the workforce in other ways, including finding temporary staff among university student bodies.
Unions are also questioning management's preparation for recovery. John O'Neill, regional industrial officer for Unite, said he understood the challenges and uncertainty faced by the industry through Covid, but added: "The strategy of mass redundancies is coming back to bite them. People are moving away from aviation and there's no sign of them coming back."
He said they had been warning for months of the impact pay and rostering could have on future recruitment. Security staff, he said, are paid £9.87 an hour, which is comparable to a warehouse worker, 'without the responsibility, high levels of scrutiny and annual testing'.
John added: "We predicted last year that pay and shift problems were going to affect recruitment unless seriously looked at.
"I don't think they predicted aviation would recover as fast as it has, they weren't ready for it. But the roster is a huge issue, there's no work-life balance. The trouble is it's a catch 22, they don't have the heads to improve the roster."
Meanwhile, for those in the fray - the thousands of staff whose livelihoods depend on the airport - these are difficult times.
"Workers are at breaking point, they are going to get to a point of exhaustion. The airport has to do something in the lull between Easter and Summer otherwise God Knows what it's going to be like," added John.
For passengers arriving at Manchester Airport on Monday night these problems translated into yet more long, snaking queues. Among them was Andrea Britland, who travelled with her family to the airport from her home in Rossendale.
After seeing the delays on Facebook, she arrived at the airport more than five hours before her flight with Ryanair was due to depart for Ibiza. She said: "I've never known it like this. We are not flying till 5.30pm and we arrived here about 12.30pm. We thought were being clever. We dropped the car off and it was fine but then we came up here and we were met with that."
Andrea pointed to the mass of people standing inside the terminal. "I just thought 'what is going on'," she said. "There's no staff just a sea of people. Everyone looks bewildered. Even airline staff look bemused. We've got nowhere near the check-in desk."
Multi-million pound package
Manchester City Council, which stumped up £143m of the 2020 package, has now confirmed talks are ongoing with the airport as furious passengers continue to report missed flights as a result of the delays. But the council refused to comment specifically on the travel chaos in the terminals.
Between them, Greater Manchester's town halls have a 64.5 per cent stake in MAG, which owns and operates the airport as well as Stansted in London and East Midlands airports, and receive dividends. Manchester City Council has a 35.5 per cent stake, as does an Australian investment fund, and the nine other councils hold the remaining shares, 29 per cent.
Up to 2019, the councils had received dividends from its two-thirds share in MAG, with a £110m payout to shareholders in 2019 the last one before the pandemic hit. Historically, the money has been used to offset the impact of squeezed budgets in departments like social services.
In May 2020, as the Covid pandemic and the resulting lockdown hit, Greater Manchester's councils agreed to pump in financial support totalling around £260m to help secure the airports' futures, as only essential travel was permitted. Manchester City Council itself, as the joint largest shareholder, shouldered the majority of the payment, a sum of around £143m.
Senior local authority figures said at the time the move was aimed at protecting significant long-term town hall investment in the airport, along with safeguarding tens of thousands of jobs (Manchester Airport was home to 25,000 staff before the pandemic) that rely on it as a major engine of the local economy, but accepted they didn't expect to see repayments for years.
Despite the huge loan, the council refused to comment specifically on the unfolding situation at Manchester Airport - as holidaymaker fury continues ahead of the traditionally busy Easter getaway. In a statement, they said: "Manchester City Council is one of a number of shareholders in Manchester Airports Group, along with the other nine Greater Manchester councils.
"It is therefore inappropriate for the council to speak on behalf of the other shareholders around the operational management of the airport. However, the council has maintained a dialogue with the airport as they manage recent and ongoing capacity issues and staff shortages."
Recovery will take 'time and patience'
The M.E.N has contacted all ten councils and the leaders of their councils for comment. Councillor Martyn Cox, leader of Bolton Council said the airport 'had got a big issue' and 'needed to get a grip'. He said: "Over the last seven days there have been significant issues, particularly getting through security.
"On some occasions it's been more than an hour-and-a-half to get through and of course, people have got flights to catch. The airport has got a big issue and needs to get a grip of it. We know what's happened, they've been shut down basically for the duration of the pandemic and now we've opened up very quickly. People want to travel and they're having to gear up very quickly.
"Obviously you can't just throw anybody on security. They need to be trained and know what they are doing. It's taking a bit longer but they need to up their game before we head into the summer season. If it's not sorted by then people will rightly try to seek alternative airports. They'll not use it and it will cause reputational damage."
Stockport council leader, Councillor Elise Wilson, said: "It's clearly not an acceptable situation at Manchester Airport and we hope for the benefit of families planning their holidays that this is improved quickly. We have been given assurances that there is a plan in place to fill vacancies at the airport so passengers can expect a much better service.
"Having recently launched Greater Manchester’s International strategy and represented the city region on a recent mission to Ireland, we know the importance of the airport as a gateway to the world."
A source at one of the councils told the M.E.N : "The reason Manchester is successful is because it's the region's only sizeable airport. It went through a huge reduction of staff because of unfortunately having to let people go because of Covid. It's rebounded in terms of people coming through the airport to the same level, but can't get the same number of staff back."
Noting MAG also owns Stansted, which hasn't reported similar problems, the source said it's proven difficult to get staff back because there is more competition for labour in Manchester - and the city has a smaller pool of people to draw from compared to London.
"It's difficult to get people back through the door because of the size of the city, the pool of people just isn't the same," they added. "It will rectify itself. It's not corporate policy, it's entirely to do with the labour market in Manchester."
Baguley councillor Paul Andrews, a former baggage handler who worked at the airport for 25 years, said: "As somebody who worked at the airport for 25 years, and my father just as long, I watched the airport grow to be one of the best in the country.
"For me it was a great place to work and it was a great advertisement for the city of Manchester and to see the position it is in now is quite upsetting. It's reputation is in tatters. I don't completely blame the airport for all their problems because they are trying to deal with the fall-out of Covid. They will get back on top but it's going to take time and it's going to take patience."
The M.E.N has asked the Department for Transport for comment and whether the loan to councils to pass on to Manchester Airports Group was sourced from taxpayer money.
What Manchester Airport Say:
A Manchester Airport spokesperson mounted a robust defence of the management of the airport, particularly addressing the stinging 'get a grip or get out' criticism of Graham Stringer.
They said: “The Covid-19 crisis has had a devastating impact on the aviation industry, with the ONS identifying it as the hardest-hit sector of the economy. In the early stages of the pandemic, air travel ground to a halt , meaning businesses like MAG were unable to generate any income, while continuing to incur significant operating costs.
"In order to protect the long-term viability of the business, we took quick and decisive action to reduce costs – pausing non-essential maintenance, temporarily closing some of our terminals and maximising the use of the furlough scheme.
"Despite taking all these steps, we regrettably needed to make more than 450 colleagues redundant, in order to further reduce operating costs and ensure we made it through the biggest crisis ever faced by our industry. Others chose to leave the business during this period.
"For many months, international travel restrictions held back the recovery of aviation, with no clarity on when they would be removed. MAG, along with the rest of our industry, consistently argued this made it impossible to plan our recovery, given uncertainty around when demand would return to the market.
"As recently as January, passenger volumes were as low as one-third of what they were pre-pandemic, as restrictions imposed in response to the Omicron variant remained in place. They have risen dramatically since the eventual removal of testing and quarantine requirements, but there are challenges associated with trying to scale back up at pace.
"We have been working hard to recruit the colleagues we need to keep pace with this demand, and are pleased to be once again creating hundreds of jobs for the region.
"This has involved a programme of more than 20 jobs fairs and a widespread advertising campaign, and we are committed to making the package of employment at Manchester Airport as competitive and attractive as possible.
"We have been encouraged by the high volume of applications for these roles, with hundreds of interviews being conducted every week. However, as many in our industry are experiencing there is no quick fix to these challenging circumstances. We have been clear that the vetting and training processes involved with airport security jobs means it takes longer for people to be able to start work in our operation, and this will, at times, result in longer queues than we would like.
"We understand the frustrations of customers and other interested parties, but want to assure all concerned that we are working as hard as we can to tackle this issue and have put a number of short-term measures in place while colleague applications are being processed. This includes hiring temporary staff in the short-term and exploring ways in which existing employees can support the operation."
On the loan from councils, a spokesman said in the early stages of the pandemic MAG put in place 'a range of measures to preserve cash and limit the impact of significantly reduced passenger volumes'.
They added: "These include reducing costs, delaying non-essential capital expenditure and, as is common when businesses encounter such circumstances, talking to our shareholders about the appropriate balance of equity funding."
In response to Unite the Union questions around staff pay and rostering, an airport spokesperson said: “In the early stages of the pandemic, we took a number of steps to limit the impact of dramatically reduced passenger volumes and to protect the long-term financial health of the business.
“This included reducing costs by delaying non-essential capital expenditure, agreeing temporary salary reductions for all staff and maximising the use of the furlough scheme.
“Regrettably, we had make a number of colleagues redundant at a time when international travel restrictions were imposed, with no clarity about the timescale for their removal.
“For many months, there was huge uncertainty about how long testing and quarantine requirements would remain in place and, as a result, when we could properly plan for our recovery.
“As soon as it became clear demand was likely to return to the market, we embarked on a significant recruitment drive, which has included a high profile advertising campaign and the staging of a series of jobs fairs.
“A large volume of applications have been received, and we are conducting hundreds of interviews each week, which is hugely encouraging. Hundreds of new staff have already started in the operation, with hundreds more expected to in the weeks ahead.
“However, the training and vetting processes associated with airport security jobs means this takes time, which delays the speed at which we can get stuff numbers to the level we need them to be to support the increase in passenger volumes we have experienced.
“We work hard to ensure our terms and conditions of employment are as competitive as possible and work closely with our Trade Unions on these issues.”
