Misery at Manchester Airport shows why we need Doncaster Sheffield Airport to reopen here - Jayne Dowle
For the third year in a row, Which? has placed Terminal 3 at the North’s biggest airport at the bottom of the pile when it comes to customer satisfaction across 11 categories, including seating, staff, toilets and queues at check in, bag drop, security and passport control.
The magazine calls the overall customer rating of 37 per cent “dismal”. The terminal received just a one-star rating for seating, staff, security queues, range of shops and prices, and only two stars in any other category, with Which? recording “widespread complaints about queues and lack of seating”.
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Hide AdThe airport has flown straight back, accusing Which? of publishing a report “based on poor information” and including “factual inaccuracies”, saying the organisation sought to advertise its magazine through “deliberately sensationalist and misleading” statements.


It pointed out that Which? surveyed “a small number of its own readers”, representing just 0.0026 per cent of the airport’s annual passengers, and took its sample in April this year, covering the previous 12 months, “meaning the experiences could be as far back as April 2023”.
Let’s leave them to it. Almost everyone who has ever flown out of Manchester has a tale to tell. My daughter and I once arrived at the wrong terminal for our Ryanair flight to Ibiza and found ourselves walking a full mile until we found the correct departure point.
I had to pick up her and her boyfriend last week from Terminal 2 following their holiday in Spain. Having never done this before, I was literally shaking as I followed the satnav instructions along this ‘avenue’ and that ‘way’ to find the correct car park.
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Hide AdBut, to be honest, Manchester is nowhere near as intimidating as Gatwick, where I once received a £100 fine for going 37 seconds over the 10 minutes allocated to handing over my car to the ‘meet and greet’ driver.
The point is however, after London Heathrow and London Gatwick, Manchester is the busiest airport in the UK, serving more than 27 million passengers a year. With three terminals and a cargo terminal, it’s huge, covering 1,400 acres of land.
The scale of the place is intimidating enough. Add to that the natural anxieties many travellers feel, the disconnect the Covid pandemic caused between ourselves and air travel, and a general move towards consumers taking any opportunity to voice their complaints, and it’s not surprising that Manchester is facing criticism.
What’s clear to me and anyone who ever wants to leave the country from Yorkshire, is that the North of England needs another airport. And that it should be here, this side of the Pennines.
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Hide AdThe North East has two international airports, Newcastle and Teeside. We have Leeds-Bradford, which came 13th out of the 29 UK airports Which? surveyed.
And the mothballed Doncaster-Sheffield, of course. The airport was closed by its owner Peel Group in 2022, but the company has since agreed to lease the site to a new investor to run.
Doncaster Council signed a leasehold agreement with Peel earlier this year. In June, there was a deadline for investors to submit their bids to reopen.
A formal business case was then to be submitted to the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA), with the chosen bidder expected to sign a lease this month.
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Hide AdIf all goes smoothly, it’s reported that the airport could re-open for passengers and freight as early as next year. But as we know, the path of good intentions can often hit stumbling blocks.
There is certainly an argument for demand. In February, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) reported an increase in passenger demand that proved the industry had not just made a full recovery from the Covid years, it was surpassing levels seen in 2019 by 5.7 per cent. This clearly indicates that the industry has successfully rebounded from the impact of the pandemic.
Despite the cost of living crisis, fears over climate change and in the face of global insecurity, we’ve never wanted to fly as often, as frequently and as far. Our region should not be left out of the race. Re-opening Doncaster Sheffield would ease pressure on Manchester, certainly for travellers in South and West Yorkshire, as well as alleviating further demands on Leeds-Bradford, which has limited scope for expansion.
It would make perfect sense. Let’s hope that the skies ahead are clear for Doncaster-Sheffield to show the world it can compete favourably with the big boys.
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