Today we drove to collect Marion’s parents from Leeds
Bradford Airport, for those of you who do not know LBA is our local airport and
is on the small scale for UK airports. There are low cost airlines flying to
the usual destinations in near Europe, together with short haul flights to
European hubs and Heathrow. Its attractiveness to us has always been the ease
of using it and we have preferred it to the much larger Manchester airport.
However it is steadily trying our patience. First of
all its drop off restrictions is the most restrictive of any airport I have
used in the world. Although it has an extensive concourse for parking or
drop-off. This is completely closed so that to get to the terminal from the
nearest parking you have to cross a bus way, a taxi rank and then three empty roadways.
The argument that the airport uses is that this is for security, why then can
you get much closer to other airport terminals including those at Heathrow and
Manchester?
With those airports it is also possible to get to the
terminals by light or heavy rail, at Leeds you travel by car or bus so there is
no alternative to the long walk. It is extremely difficult if you are
collecting or taking disabled or infirm travellers. I have also experienced to
my cost that if it is raining there you just get very very wet.
So ok this is a small regional airport and as such it
is low cost. Oh no to add insult to injury you are charged £3 just to use the
drop off facility, if you should stray over the 30 minutes it costs £9 and
becomes astronomical beyond an hour. Again at all the major airports I have
used you pay for short-term parking but it is free to drop-off.
Leeds wants to become a hub for the Yorkshire
economy, however it is driving travellers away with primitive facilities. To
add the last insult there were only four seats to sit on outside of domestic
arrivals one of which was out of order.
Come-on Leeds as Yorkshire’s gateway you must be able
to do better than this.
No comments:
Post a Comment