In the end, I stood in line for an hour before I handed in my suitcase. As I said to the woman at the counter, though, "If you think this is chaos, you've not seen Manchester Airport in pre-pandemic times." She looked a bit startled and then informed me that I should allow two to two-and-a-half hours for the security check tomorrow.
Duly warned, I arrived at the airport the next morning with plenty of time to spare. I joined a queue at the security area at 7.36 a.m. and was through at...7.46 a.m. And that included an officer pulling my rucksack to one side and taking out a pencil case (I had intended to do some sketching) and then testing the artist's eraser that I had. Admittedly, it does look a bit strange: rather like putty.
That means, however, that it took me a lot less time to go through security at the airport than in previous times. And Manchester Airport....I remember flying back to Germany with my youngest cousin at Easter 2017 and we didn't move from the spot for over 30 minutes. Only two security officers were on duty. It was horrendous. And the check-in at Manchester returning at Easter 2019 was chaotic and horrible. I got shouted at by a member of staff, who didn't apologise for her bad behaviour at all. One Dutch woman said it was the most confusing airport she had been to; an English man said it was the worst airport in the world.
When I arrived at Palma Airport, by the time I had walked a few kilometres to get to the luggage carousel (the airport is HUGE), the luggage was already coming out.
On the way back, I bought a ticket in 10 minutes. Handed in my luggage and got a boarding card in 2 minutes and went through security in 2 minutes, too. I then had 5 hours to kill.
All that worrying...and all for nothing in the end. The media can really whip up people's emotions.
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