US airports: 'menacing, cramped and devoid of humanity'

On 07/06/2014 12:17, Martin wrote:
On Sat, 7 Jun 2014 11:15:30 +0100, "JohnT" wrote:

I have travelled into Newcastle airport many times, connecting at Schiphol,
and I know that the security at the arrival airport isn't all visible. All
luggage is scanned before being placed on the delivery carousel and passport
examination nowadays is quite rigorous. Passengers originating in Amsterdam
tend to get more attention from the UK Border Agency than do transfer
passengers.

Duh I was talking about travelling to Newcastle by ferry from IJmuiden. I
assumed that Mike was too.

No, Schipol to Gatwick.



Customs are near invisible at Hull and Newcastle
ferry terminals, they occasionally stop a van and search it. The immigration
staff are friendly and always polite.

Bill wrote:
On Fri, 6 Jun 2014 15:10:27 +0000 (UTC), Erilar
wrote:

Surreyman wrote:
On Friday, June 6, 2014 8:45:21 AM UTC+1, Tim C. wrote:
On Thu, 05 Jun 2014 11:34:26 +0200, Martin wrote in post :

:



The queues aren't unique to the

USA. We took a charter flight from Schiphol where queues extended outside the

airport building, in this case there were not enough check in staff.



Trying to get through Passport control at Stansted is a pain.

--

Tim C. Linz, Austria.

We use smaller provincial airports wherever possible these days, such as
Southampton - they often have extensive itineraries and queues are
virtually non-existent!

If I ever visit the UK again, I'll use anything but LHR! I hear Manchester
is civilized.

Heathrow is a lot better these days, especially if you fly with BA
and use terminal 5...


BA is now tops on my „avoid at all costs" list. They mucked up the return
half of an e- ticket, changing both my name and my sex and it took several
people and altogether too much time to deal with. Airline ticket always
smash my double last name together, but some idiot took it apart and
deleted my first name so my eticket was in their computer with a male name.
This was the RETURN half! I was still grumbling about it when I went
through pass control at O'Hare, and the official there laughed and said BA
fouled things up often!

Manchester is nice, clean but busy with holiday charters. So it gets
noisy and full of people.

The best provincial airport we've flown from is Leeds/Bradford.

BA have a Heathrow shuttle flying into there several times a day.
BA? Horrors


--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

S Viemeister wrote:
On 6/6/2014 11:10 AM, Erilar wrote:

If I ever visit the UK again, I'll use anything but LHR! I hear Manchester
is civilized.

I find Edinburgh and Glasgow _much_ less unpleasant than Heathrow.

The year I went to Orkney I flew to Aberdeen via Copenhagen, spent a day in
Scotland, then flew on to Kirkwall. 8-)
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

On Sat, 07 Jun 2014 13:17:47 +0200, Martin wrote:

Customs are near invisible at Hull

But not passport control for foot passengers, which is pretty strict
these days, and you have to queue to get through them.

On 6/7/2014 9:41 AM, Erilar wrote:
S Viemeister wrote:
On 6/6/2014 11:10 AM, Erilar wrote:

If I ever visit the UK again, I'll use anything but LHR! I hear Manchester
is civilized.

I find Edinburgh and Glasgow _much_ less unpleasant than Heathrow.

The year I went to Orkney I flew to Aberdeen via Copenhagen, spent a day in
Scotland, then flew on to Kirkwall. 8-)

Where did you start from in your Aberdeen trip? I once went to London
via Frankfurt from New York but that was not my choice but that of the
cut-rate airline, which used the excuse of fog in London not to stop
there even if I was able to get an almost immediate flight from
Frankfurt to Heath Row. The carrier has gone now gone now but I think it
was World Airways.

--
Jim Silverton (Potomac, MD)

Extraneous "not." in Reply To.

James Silverton wrote:
On 6/7/2014 9:41 AM, Erilar wrote:
S Viemeister wrote:
On 6/6/2014 11:10 AM, Erilar wrote:

If I ever visit the UK again, I'll use anything but LHR! I hear Manchester
is civilized.

I find Edinburgh and Glasgow _much_ less unpleasant than Heathrow.

The year I went to Orkney I flew to Aberdeen via Copenhagen, spent a day in
Scotland, then flew on to Kirkwall. 8-)

Where did you start from in your Aberdeen trip? I once went to London via
Frankfurt from New York but that was not my choice but that of the
cut-rate airline, which used the excuse of fog in London not to stop
there even if I was able to get an almost immediate flight from Frankfurt
to Heath Row. The carrier has gone now gone now but I think it was World Airways.
SAS from Chicago to Copenhagen, then Aberdeen.


--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist with iPad

On 07/06/2014 22:40, Martin wrote:
On Sat, 07 Jun 2014 13:59:54 +0100, Mike O'Sullivan wrote:

On 07/06/2014 12:17, Martin wrote:
On Sat, 7 Jun 2014 11:15:30 +0100, "JohnT" wrote:

I have travelled into Newcastle airport many times, connecting at Schiphol,
and I know that the security at the arrival airport isn't all visible. All
luggage is scanned before being placed on the delivery carousel and passport
examination nowadays is quite rigorous. Passengers originating in Amsterdam
tend to get more attention from the UK Border Agency than do transfer
passengers.

Duh I was talking about travelling to Newcastle by ferry from IJmuiden. I
assumed that Mike was too.

No, Schipol to Gatwick.

I mixed up the OP, it was Frank. Sorry, Mike.


Geen probleem!

"Erilar" wrote in message
...
Bill wrote:

BA is now tops on my „avoid at all costs" list. They mucked up the return
half of an e- ticket, changing both my name and my sex and it took several
people and altogether too much time to deal with. Airline ticket always
smash my double last name together, but some idiot took it apart and
deleted my first name so my eticket was in their computer with a male
name.
This was the RETURN half! I was still grumbling about it when I went
through pass control at O'Hare, and the official there laughed and said BA
fouled things up often!

Manchester is nice, clean but busy with holiday charters. So it gets
noisy and full of people.

The best provincial airport we've flown from is Leeds/Bradford.

BA have a Heathrow shuttle flying into there several times a day.

BA? Horrors

I flew BA, long and short haul, at least 500 times and they got it
spectacularly wrong twice. Which isn't a bad record. And they tried really
hard to sort out problems when they did arise.

I find it very difficult to comprehend how the RETURN half of an e-ticket
can be "mucked up". An e-ticket is just a record on a computer system -
Amadeus in the case of BA - and it has no physical existence. It doesn't
have two halfs.

Perhaps Erilar should try a few flights on Spirit Airlines in the USA or on
Ryanair in Europe. She may then have some benchmark for comparison.


--
JohnT

On Sun, 08 Jun 2014 08:42:52 +0200, Martin wrote:


BA is now tops on my „avoid at all costs" list. They mucked up the return
half of an e- ticket, changing both my name and my sex and it took several
people and altogether too much time to deal with. Airline ticket always
smash my double last name together, but some idiot took it apart and
deleted my first name so my eticket was in their computer with a male name.
This was the RETURN half! I was still grumbling about it when I went
through pass control at O'Hare, and the official there laughed and said BA
fouled things up often!

You are still grumbling about it now. I often travelled with BA, I never had a
problem,

I have, a decade ago the people in economy were treated as cattle,
but they're a lot better now they've got rid of most of their old
cabin crew and are employing enthusiastic youngsters.

Manchester is nice, clean but busy with holiday charters. So it gets
noisy and full of people.

The best provincial airport we've flown from is Leeds/Bradford.

One of the worst to land at in a storm. See youtube for examples.

I've landed in one, it was pretty frightening, but we did land
safely.

I don't think anyone has crashed there in a storm yet...

On Sun, 8 Jun 2014 09:30:02 +0100, "JohnT"
wrote:

I find it very difficult to comprehend how the RETURN half of an e-ticket
can be "mucked up".

They did it to me this year.

I booked by phone late at night from the UK but via their 'out of
hours' Indian call center and the credit card transaction was done in
a bulk process transaction later that night.

The bank, for reasons never disclosed, decided that the transaction
was possibly fraudulent, which it wasn't, but didn't get in touch
with me for 48 hours.

When my electronic ticket arrived the next day only the outward leg
had been confirmed.

The whole mess took about a week and ten hours on the phone to sort
out, and ended with some compensation from the bank and a confirmed
ticket both ways...

It looks like BA's ticketing system sometimes issues a return ticket
with no return leg specified if there's some sort of irregularity with
the payment.