Liverpool John Lennon Airport’s money-making scheme
Last Thursday, I flew to Madrid from Liverpool Airport. Yes, I know the official name is Liverpool John Lennon Airport, but I suspect the peace-loving Beatle wouldn’t really want to be associated with something that causes so much pain, anger and aggravation.
Whilst there, I encountered one of the most extraordinarily nasty money-making schemes I have ever witnessed within the travel industry.
Easyjet check-in queue
First up, a little credit where credit is due. The queues for check-in (I was flying with Easyjet) were short and painless. This is possibly because I arrived two-and-a-half hours before the flight, but I’m prepared to accept that levels of staffing and training are perfectly adequate in this part of the airport.
Enormous security queue
Alas, from then on, it all went wrong. The queue to get through security was snaking around the building. We were stood in it for at least an hour and fifteen minutes, getting increasingly angry, and worried about missing our flight.
The really nerve-wracking aspect of the queue was that no-one quite knew how long it was. It snaked around corners and down stairs – for all we knew it could have been a four or five hour wait.
Fast Lane ticket machines
So amidst this atmosphere of fear and frustration, Liverpool Airport’s clever little scheme comes into its own. The long and winding queue is flanked by a legion of ticket machines, which offer the chance to join the special ‘Fast Lane’ for a “summer special” price of just £2.
Fast Lane psychology
What a brilliant plan; make the security queue so appallingly bad that people are frightened and angry enough to pay good money in order to jump it. And as more people jump it, those in the queue begin to fear that the Fast Laners are going straight to the front, thus making the normal queue even longer. So they feel forced to buy one as well.
Too many flights; not enough security staff
And then, when it gets to the point where everyone can finally see the end of the queue, they realise it’s just a separate queue that’s not really all that much faster anyway; it’s simply a case of splitting the payers and non-payers into two.
At the end of the line, the poor passengers are reduced to shouting and screaming at the one poor chap checking boarding passes. He protests, fairly convincingly, that it’s not his fault. There are simply too many ‘extra’ flights, and not enough security staff.
Appalling core service
It’s hard to believe this is sheer incompetence. Surely Liverpool Airport’s management knows that they’ve got a massive understaffing and queuing problem. Therefore, the only possible conclusion is that this is an act of greedy bastardry on an epic scale. Essentially, they’ve made their core service so atrociously poor that people feel forced to pay extra in order to make a futile attempt to sneak around it.
Further ideas for revenue generation
Well I have a few more ideas for Liverpool Airport to swell their coffers. Expect them implemented by the end of the month if the Fast Lane scheme is anything to go by.
- Don’t clean nine out of ten toilet cubicles, leaving them smeared with excrement and stinking like the elephant enclosure at Chester Zoo. Charge a special bargain rate of £2 to use the only remaining clean one.
- Replace the security scanners with shredders and flaming hoops. Passengers can then pay a megadeal price of £2 to not to jump through fire and have their bags lacerated.
- Adapt an old Scouse tradition: fill the car parks with spotty, unwashed youths who charge £2 “to watch your car, mister” rather than scratch the paintwork, smash the windows and steal the stereos.
Another alternative
Or, and here’s a radical idea, how about employing sufficient security staff so that queues are dramatically shortened? Who knows, passengers may then have time to spend money in the shops and restaurants. They may even decide that they wish to use the airport again, rather than go out of their way to avoid it.
Tags: airlines, airport, charges, Easyjet, Liverpool John Lennon Airport, queue
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by David Whitley. David Whitley said: For those preparing to use Liverpool Airport, prepare for a staggeringly nasty money-making scheme: http://bit.ly/3BIYqA [...]
what a horrible ordeal!
you can get to the front of all airport lines if you’re handicapped. My husband has a bad hip, and uses a cane for walking long distances, like changing terminals at airports. If it’s a real monstrous airport, like Chicago’s O’Hare, we make arrangements to have a wheelchair meet us at the plane door. You go to the front of every single line then, but even then it’s tough to make the next flight, especially if you’re changing from an international to a domestic flight at O’Hare or vice versa. We would miss every connection if we didn’t have the wheel chair. Those attendants push the chair so fast, I have to run to keep up.
If anyone knows of a quicker way to beat the lines, other than being handicapped, I’d sure like to know.
Interesting post. I’m actually planning to spend a day at Liverpool John Lennon doing some live Twittering over the next few weeks and will definitely put these concerns to the management. In your experience, do other regional airports have similar schemes, or is this a uniquely LJL approach? David
I couldn’t really say to be honest: I generally use Manchester, East Midlands or one of the London airports where, to my knowledge, there’s nothing similar.
Peel Airports (owners of Liverpool) also own a few others – Doncaster-Sheffield-Robin Hood-Middle of Whoopwhoop, Humberside and Durham Tees Valley I believe. So something similar may be happening there.
It sounds like Ryanair’s priority boarding fee: meaningful when few were taking it up, meaningless once most started paying for it. It’s even possible that the “priority” lane at Liverpool might move slower than the regular one sometimes if a large percentage opted for it. All sounds a bit pointless and as you said, a blatant rip-off.
They now do a similar thing at Luton airport, but there is not a separate security check for people paying, they do just jump to the front of the queue. Yes it does get “interesting” at peak times.
This to add to the fact at Luton you now have to pay (not just a deposit) for luggage trolleys, and even pay to drop off passengers at the terminal.
As for your ideas list, Luton airport also seem to have introduced number 1, except without the clean stall.