I’m an S + M girl… (Other airports...)

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Other airports...
Date:	10/04/02 (177 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: local for me

Disadvantages: more than you could possibly imagine

And before any of you start to get the wrong idea, I’m talking about only liking items beginning with those letters that can be found at Blackpool airport – namely shops and money - and nothing kinky.

I once wrote an op on Manchester airport called “Full of Common Northerners”, but as someone famous once said, I ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. I do want to be nice, so I think I’ll leave my observations on the passengers who pass through here at that – I’m sure you can all fill in the blanks.

Blackpool airport’s been there for years, but this is the first time I’ve ever been inside, let alone flown from it. We chose this place over, say, Manchester or Liverpool, as it’s so much closer and therefore more convenient. Last week we checked in and flew to Tenerife. This morning, at some utterly ungodly hour, we flew back and landed here. The good news is, I survived. The bad news is, only just.

The address of an airport is, y’know, a pretty useful thing to have at times, so here goes:

Blackpool Airport
Squires Gate Lane
Blackpool

01253 34 34 34

That probably won’t mean much to non-locals, but it’s not a problem as the airport is well signed from the M55 and from Blackpool town centre. There are good transport links, with Blackpool South station about 5 mins walk away, and regular buses to Blackpool bus station and the rest of the Fylde Coast. Immediately outside the terminal is a reasonably large taxi rank. A one way fare between St Annes and the airport is about £6, including that nasty little surcharge they put on for the privilege or carrying your suitcases in the boot. Even so, at £12 return it’s significantly less than the £50 return fare we pay to Manchester.

We arrived as instructed, late Tuesday morning. There was already a queue in the tiny ‘ickle check in area but the staff were reasonably
efficient and we were soon relieved of our bags. ‘Twas time to explore, but we soon realised a problem – there was nothing there *to* explore. Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration. After all, landside they have a smoky café-cum-pub, a shop (just the one, mind), cash machines, a bureau de change and a couple of toilets. It’s not that little, but imagine all that squashed into the space of your average primary school class room. The “shop” was a corner with a shelf of women’s magazines and the odd Mars Bar for example. I knew it wouldn’t be what I was used to, but really – is it even legal to have an airport without a WH Smiths? They have 6 at Manchester if I’m not mistaken – hell, even JFK has one, and that’s not even in this country. With no Cadbury’s shop, no Waterstones, no Boots, no Tie Rack, no Virgin Megastore and of course, no Smiths, I was quite at a loss as to what to do.

With plenty of time to kill we went through passport control (little man in a little hut squinting at blurry passport photos taken years ago) to see if airside was better. It wasn’t. Here there are lots of lounges (the only thing this airport has more than 2 of) – one smoking and one non-smoking for each of the, er, 3 gates. With no other flight leaving in the foreseeable future, however, everyone spread out like gases in corked conical flasks to fill the space available. We even went to the little standy thing selling overpriced junk to see if we could waste some money and pass some time. Disappointed again – their choice stretched to overpriced coffees, Pepsi and Mars bars (not even Coke and Galaxy, sob), plus a wide range of alcoholic drinks – just the thing to serve to customers before a long, boring 4 and a bit hour flight.

Just as I was kicking back with that morning’s Times, the tannoy came alive and they demanded my presence back at the baggage search area.
Despite some quick thinking about what I could have in there as I walked over (Knives? Bombs? Aerosols? Ant killer?) I couldn’t think what could have shown up on their x-ray machines. They searched my bag, rifled through my La Senza knickers and dropped Benjamin on the floor, but to no avail. After signing to say, yeah, I’d let them mess up my packing and bend the covers on my brand new books, I was free to go back to the airside departure lounges. Now for the interesting bit : at check in we were told not to have a ton of goods in our hand luggage, one of which was tweezers. Mine were in my pocket as I’d grabbed them at the last minute before we left the house. Despite two trips through the walkthrough metal detector, they weren’t picked up, and I safely carried them all the way to the Canaries. It’s all very well asking people not to take certain things with them, but since when did people pay attention to polite requests? Because if someone has asked the September 11th hijackers if they had anything sharp and dangerous on their bodies, they’d definitely have handed everything over, right? Perhaps not.

Air Europa fly to Tenerife from Blackpool once a week, and back once a week. We saw the plane land at 11.30 and were sitting on it by just after 12 noon, so pretty fast turn around then. The flight was pretty usual and will be coming up in a new op anyway, but one thing I will say is that the view was surprisingly refreshing, both on take off and landing back here in Blackpool. The runway is a narrow strip with lush green grass either side, quite a change from the concrete slabs at Ringway. Similarly, instead of posh little Cheshire villages, as you come in to land here there are stunning views of the sea and sand dunes. It almost made me feel glad to be home, at least until the captain did his standard “Welcome to Blackpool where it is 7 degrees.” Just, oh, 20 degrees cooler than where we were yesterday then
.

Arriving back, as with going, we had to walk from the plane to the terminal building. They don’t run to nice big buses you see. Good thing that, for once, it wasn’t raining. Blackpool is a tiny airport and as such you’d think there wouldn’t be problems with getting your suitcases back. There’s only one carousel and never more than one plane landing per hour, so quite why it took us over 15 mins to retrieve all our stuff I don’t know, although the fact that we hit the ground about 5 mins before half past probably had something to do with it – after loading up half the luggage, all the staff, along with the passengers, stopped for a couple of minute’s silence as a mark or respect for the Queen mother. As usual the bags came out in dribs and drabs, and, also as usual, ours were almost last off. But, they all arrived in one piece, and I guess that’s the most important thing. We didn’t have passport control at this end – just the normal “Anything to declare? Nope? OK off you go then”. Round the corner and you’re in the arrivals area (handily located 10m from departures – I told you it was small). Two minutes later we were in a taxi whizzing back here to a week’s worth of post and text messages, our adventure at the most primitive airport ever, well and truly over.

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Some extra points now. Blackpool airport really is tiny. There is just one terminal with 3 gates, and the whole airport building is probably only just larger than the bottom floor of my house. It’s *that* small. Saying “landside” and “airside” sounds soooooo silly here – the only thing separating them is about 4m and a thin bendy wall… Despite this, however, more and more people are using it when they flee the country in search of pastures new, even if only for a week or so. The choice of places to which you can fl
y from Blackpool is fairly small and fairly weird, sorry, diverse. With it being called the “Blackpool of Spain” it’s no surprise that you can fly to Benidorm from there, and Tenerife, also loud, British and tacky, is also available. Apart from these though, your choice seems to be the odd Channel Island, the Isle of Mann and, erm, Iceland. OK then…..

Because not all that many flights take off from here each day, the arrival and departure times, even with package holidays, are pretty nice. We flew out at 12.30pm and arrived back 11.30am. The only problem is, it’s a 4 and a bit hour flight. Factor in getting to the departure airport 2 hours early, along with staying a resort about 45 mins from there, and you end up with a rather tired Zoë who got up in the middle of the night. Still, from B’pool’s point of view, the hours are good. Those meeting flights can get up normally and have plenty of time, and those leaving from there don’t have to rise exceptionally early either. The only real exception is Iceland because as well as normal flights, local travel agencies run day trips here which naturally enough require an early start and late return, to give you a full 9 - 6 day in the country.

Blackpool airport deals with an odd choice of companies. While usual favourites such as Hertz and BA put in the odd appearance, most firms represented are small unknowns like Air Europa who we flew with, or local independent hotels rather than the multinational chains. The “airport hotel” is actually a Travel Inn next door - not quite a Sheraton or Hilton then. Still, it’s handy and cheapish (~ £50 per room per night, and these rooms sleep up to 4 people). If you want to go further afield, inside the terminal there’s a bulletin board featuring adverts for local hotels and guesthouses. Tourist information is limited as it’s assumed that people using this airport are going away more than co
ming here. I’ll be quite worried when people start flying up to Blackpool for a dirty weekend.

For an airport so small and pathetic, they really do seem to have their disabled facilities up to scratch. Those in wheelchairs get to board first – about 30 mins before the rest of us -and there are huge, spotless disabled toilets which are much more impressive than the ordinary ones. Wherever you go there are staff members ready to assist you and each disabled party, at least on our flight, seemed to be assigned their own personal escort after passport control.

One thing that did annoy me was the blurry distinction between smoking and non-smoking areas, or, moreover, the lack of the latter. The restrictions were not enforced and people just seemed to be lighting up everywhere. Grrrr.

Children are not well catered for at all. There’re no play areas inside or outside, and the eateries aren’t exactly child friendly. There’s a family fun pub attached to the hotel, but that’s more for people staying the night before than those arriving 2 hours before departure.

Overall, how can I describe the experience. Fun? Not really. Educational? I guess a little – now I know that incredibly bad airports really do exist. Unforgettable? Certainly, but not really in a good way. Maybe I’ll just stick to “interesting”. After all, no one can sue me for that, can they? If you are ever unfortunate to be forced to fly from here, you can do so safe in the knowledge that the odd other person has in the past, and what’s more, they survived :)

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