Teesside Airshow traffic chaos

[QuestionableMouse]

Anyone else get caught in it? We left Hartlepool at 9:30 and still hadn't reached the airport by 3pm. Just relentless traffic with no way of escaping it! We gave up in the end and turned around. Hoping I can get a refund because the tickets weren't exactly cheap. 😩

Just learned this morning they'd sold over 20k tickets and only had 5000 parking spaces so no wonder it was such chaos. 🤔😡

Just looked at the news stories on this. It sounds absolute utter chaos, YANBU to be annoyed.

The organisers just seem to be shrugging their shoulders and saying "Well we told people to leave time for their journey"

22000 tickets sold and only 5000 parking spaces. What were they planning to do when the car park was full? Turn away all the families who had already bought tickets?

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s I used to live near a RAF base that had a very popular airshow every year that attracted visitors from miles away. Even back then they knew to plan to avoid this sort of chaos and would lay on (and advertise) special rail and bus services so that people could choose alternative travel arrangements.

Surely they could have arranged something like a park and ride scheme with free buses and informed people about these on the website when they bought tickets

I saw a video of the traffic jam yesterday, it looked horrendous. The organisers of the show sound totally useless or did they think everyone be driving 4 to a car, hope you get your money back

How bizarre.

I'm very surprised that they din't have park and ride options. I know the Sunderland airshow isn't on this year, but they always make it clear that there is no nearby parking so you need to park and ride or use public transport.

Yes it was horrendous.
to be honest I was concerned about it when I saw the map for the event and realised that it was one gigantic car park with only one way in and out.
we eventually got in but as we were so worried about being stuck again on the way home we left much earlier than we otherwise would have done and it still took an hour to get out of the car park. Everyone else seemed to be doing the same.

looking around the car park, I also wondered whether there were people who had only bought a ticket for the car park, rather than tickets for the event - you didn’t have to show your ticket on entry to the site, only to go through to the display area.

anyone with any sense organising this would have put on a couple of separate car parks with more entry & exit points, with clearer signing and directing.

never again!

Not me but friends were. I’ve read so many reports of people spending 3/4 hours trying to get in.
I believe there was a distinct lack of police support. To be honest at a certain point they should have turned cars around and offered refunds. I don’t even understand why the train station wasn’t used, apparently one train a week stops there so it’s still operational.
I feel sorry for anyone trying to use the actual airport.

The airport has a train station too which wasn't used at all - I'd have happily used a train or park and ride but no, no public transport options.

Really wish we'd turned around earlier but the kids were desperate to see the planes.

They all seem to be passing the blame on unfortunately - that's the response from Sky Live 🤔😡

Oh yeah, we used the a66 and there was no traffic management at all. Someone almost hit my car trying to cut across the grass to get onto Darlington Road/access Long Newton. I think there actually was a bump behind us for the same reason!

Can't understand why they didn't use any sort of mass transport - Sunderland does a fantastic job with the park and ride!

We were staying with friends in the village next to the airport and It was gridlocked. The Postie cancelled deliveries and collections and the local businesses had lots of people who weren't able to attend appointments due to the trafffic chaos.

The show itself was great but the planning was really lacking. There's so many better ways they could have handled the traffic

I did feel really bad for locals! Had a bin lorry stuck behind us for ages and felt bad for then because being stuck in traffic while just trying to do your job must have been frustrating.

Also a flight had obviously arrived from somewhere shortly before the show started, but it seemed nobody could access the airport to collect them either as we saw quite a few people trundling their suitcases along the side of the road.

The airport remained open?! What if the emergency services had been needed?

It's amazing that this shitshow got permission to go ahead. Don't plans and contingency plans have to be approved by the airports authority and the emergency services? Were they written on the back of an envelope?

Sorry you had an awful day out with the DC, @QuestionableMouse.

They used to have this issue at the RAF Cosford airshow (which is today). They've worked really hard to sort it out. Just read on local news that there's 54000 visitors and expecting 11000 vehicles. Gates opened at 8.00am, show starts at 12.00. At 12.11 they reported that all visitors were now on site. So it can be done. Just takes lots of planning and reflecting on what went wrong.

We gave up after 2 hours on the a66. Friend managed to get in after 3 hours and then queued for 2 more to get out.
it was a shambles

No but I've heard it wasn't great once you got inside also. We were sat in Teesside Park carpark watching some of it.

It was very, very clear that there was 5k parking spaces and if you wanted to park there you needed to buy a parking ticket (£5).

We got in very quickly at 11.30, coming from Darlington through Middleton st George, however we were dropped off so didn't have to go into the car park just slightly inside the gates. On collection we walked outside and got picked up and was home again very quickly.

I think the problem was people going in cars who didn't have parking space, making the roads more congested because there were more cars than there was expected.

No clear drop off and pick up zone as well

And public transport has always been very poor to the airport and incredibly they didn't put any on! Should definitely have been park and ride.

I did buy a parking ticket and even emailed them to make sure we'd have access to a blue badge space (my mum is disabled)

It's a 20-30 minute trip on a normal day and we left as early as we could though other constraints.

Still can't believe they had no park and ride! Ridiculous. 😩😔

Cosford also has an operational railway station as well though.