When will airports / flying get back to normal?

[Helpyou]

I love travel, I really do. I used to fly about twice a year short haul.

But the stress of my most recent trip is enough to put me off for a lifetime. I feel for everyone with cancelled trips, cancelled visits to family / weddings / hens / stags etc... delays with children, delays hungover, not knowing if you'll make it home in time for work. It's a shambles. The staff on board are feeling the pressure too. When is it going to get back to normal?

(Before anyone says, I know there are bigger worries in the world but the 2 aren't mutually exclusive and right now I'm just wondering about the travel industry and whether these big airlines will even survive!)

It's also to do with people reading the stories about huge queues and arriving early. The manager of Glasgow Airport was in the news last week pleading with people to stick to arriving 2 hours before their flight - last week people were pitching up 5 or 6 hours early because they were worried about delays at security, and all that happens is that the airport can't cope because there are twice as many people as there should be trying to use the loos, find a seat, buy some lunch.

Thee are big reported problems at Dublin airport, and also there have been problems at schipol airport so those purely blaming it on Brexit, how's it work for those airports

I flew long haul with 1 change at Easter, no problems with either airports.

I posted earlier, we are at Munich waiting for a delayed flight to Manchester. Flight will depart about three hours 25 late however easyJet are quite insistent that this is due to air traffic control, therefore an “extraordinary circumstance” which means they don’t have to pay compensation. Hmmm

No idea of the situation at Manchester but FWIW according to Eurocontrol there really actually are some large blocks of congested airspace/airspace at risk of congestion ATM over north east France, north west Germany, and the UK due to "risk of thunderstorms, Staffing levels/airspace capacity,"

Flow in many places is being "regulated" which means slots may be needed for transit through that airspace and there might be the need for slots into Manchester....in other words Easyjet may not be telling lies.

With a geek warning: Pretty map top right of the page the link below takes you to gives overview from Eurocontrol, even more details if you click "tactical update" to it's left.
www.public.nm.eurocontrol.int/PUBPORTAL/gateway/spec/index.html

@notimagain thank you I’ll have a read (have currently got quite a bit of time to kill!).

I had a very normal experience in Easter holidays. In fact, it was the quickest we’ve ever gone though the airport and it was a weekend in the school hols at 7pm! From taxi to sitting in departures lounge = 25 minutes!

It seems very variable at the moment.

We flew from Manchester airport to Jamaica in February half term . TUI check in was a nightmare, took almost two hours. Then huge queues at security. With 35 minutes left before check in we had to ask to skip the line - they let us and fortunately everything was okay and we caught the flight with about 10 minutes or so to spare. We'd allowed three hours at the airport. We weren't the last to board. No issues in the return.

Dd flew from Manchester to Portugal later that month but term time. That was with Ryan air or easy jet I think. Had no issues either way, though was hand luggage only.

We've just flown from Heathrow Terminal 5 to New York with BA (though ended up being an American Airlines plane) - no issues with side with the airports and flights.

Flying in 2021 we didn't have any issues at Manchester airport.

I'm seeing a lot of stress about lost luggage on mnet at the moment, keep in mind if your luggage is lost on the way to your destination you should be able to replace essential items and claim on travel insurance. We had luggage lost for 2 days once and bought 500 euros which we had refunded on insurance (expensive resort area, no cheap options for clothes, swimwear or footwear).