Birmingham airport - worst one so far

you do tend to fly a bit when you live on an Island. Regular flights go from Kirkwall to Aberdeen ( 3 a day), Edinburgh (3 a day) and Glasgow and Inverness (1 a day) . I used the Inverness flight, in conjunction with the overnight train ,on a trip back from London.  And you can go on from there.
Recently we've been to Birmingham via Edinburgh. I'm not so keen on flying and mainland Airports.
At Kirkwall the parking is just across from the terminal building - and free. Here is Kirkwall airport - the terminal building  is the white one at the back and the car park is in front of it . You can check in online and arrive  30 minutes before your flight and go straight into the Departure Lounge

Kirkwall Airport

 Birmingham drop-off £1 for 10 minutes.
At Kirkwall check-in queue at it busiest is about 6 people.
Birmingham - its like the start of the Ba, this scrum of people milling round.

Airport Security   - a necessary inconvenience (usually).
But at Birmingham its more of an inconvenience than usual .  Think Supermarket checkouts- you choose the one that you think will move fastest and join it. And then you are wrong as the people in front of you cant find their loyalty card,  drop stuff on the floor whilst  packing it and a who l host of ther things that can go wrong.
At Birmingham your queue is indicated to you . Fair enough. And then you have to put all your stuff in the plastic box. Most places  have 2 or 3 people at a time doing this , so  if someone is particularly  slow ( you know, they can find their toothpaste or have lost their clear plastic bag ) the queue keeps moving as the others at the conveyor belt get on with it. Not at Birmingham . One at a time. No idea why  but its even more frustrating than usual.

Duty-free shopping. In the Departure lounge. Not going to be backwards in coming forwards heres the list of all the shops you can 'enjoy'.
 

But Birmingham is like the worst IKEA store you can imagine as you are forced to circuitously navigate the perfumes.  No we don't want to try this smelly stuff, or the next one, or the next one as we wind our way round blingful displays of stuff we know we don't want. Im convinced part of the 'you must turn up  at the airport 3 hours before your flight' is so they can use the rapidly getting bored and hungry captive audience to flog them  over-priced stuff   they didnt know they needed.

 Anyway our 12.25  Birmingham to Edinburgh flight was cancelled due to 'technical problems'. So Flybe re-arranged us onto the next one , still with time to get the last flight to Kirkwall. And they were  generous  enough to give us each a 'meal voucher' value £3.50. All the passengers had to collect their hold baggage (we didn't have any) go to  check-in desk, get  new Boarding card and go round through Security again ( see above) and again run the gauntlet  of perfume pushers .And we now had a couple of hours to spare. So we thought we'd better use it . The restaurant for Gates 1-20 is here . and the menu is here




 Have look at the menu - what can you have for £3.50 . A glass of Diet Coke. A cup of coffee. A meal with your meal voucher ?  - no chance. Half of the cheapest meal - no chance.  And I'm a grumpy old ****  who doesn't like being taken advantage of.

 So we went walkabout . And there is  a WHSmith. That does sandwiches, crisps , and bottles of stuff.  So not a meal with a meal voucher  but how about snack, even though they dont call it a snack voucher. But WHSmith don't take Flybe meal vouchers when you are wanting to buy a snack. And they too are taking the p***,  £1.99 for a small bottle of Diet Coke.

 And by now I was on  a crusade. there was a Boots store.  And they would accept a Flybe meal voucher. Even though you were buying a snack. And it wasn't  ridiculously over-priced. So we got a snack with our meal voucher and managed to pass  the time waiting for the flight.

So at Birmingham Airport, boycott All Bar One.  Boycott WHSmith.

 Buy at Boots !

The other thing we have discovered is that we are probably entitled to  compensation for our delayed flight courtesy of EU rule 261/2004. Technical faults happen. Flying is so safe because these things are taken note of. So its hard luck for Flybe  and its in my interests. But Flybe and other airlines are so sympathetic when you need to fly somewhere urgently. Airline ticket pricing is a murky business - the price of  flight to London from Kirkwall  will vary from about £250 return if booked well in advance to >£500 if  you need to go tomorrow. So they are happy to take advantage of me. So I'll look into receiving compensation.