I WAS interested to read a survey by Which? conducted over the past 12 months to see which UK airport is the best, as reported in the Warrington Guardian.

The consumer organisation asked 4,000 people for their opinion, scoring airports on 11 categories, including seating, staff, toilets, queues at check-in, bag drop, passport control and security.

According to the survey results, people who live round here have the chance to experience the best of air travel and the worst of air travel.

It came as no surprise to me that Liverpool John Lennon airport came out top of the list, scoring an overall customer score of 82 per cent based on a combination of overall satisfaction and likelihood passengers would recommend the airport to family and friends.

And it came as no surprise that at the other end of the scale, Manchester Airport took the lowest two places in the rankings, with a customer score of just 38 per cent for Terminal 3 and 44 per cent for Terminal 1.

Having travelled through both Liverpool John Lennon Airport and Manchester Airport’s Terminal 3 over the past couple of years, this pretty much sums up my experience.

In June, I was due to fly from Manchester to Palma de Mallorca for some early summer sun. A couple of weeks before we were due to travel, Ryanair suddenly changed the times of our flights which meant we would have arrived much later than originally planned.

To be fair to Ryanair, they allowed us to switch flights from Manchester to Liverpool and the relief was palpable.

Why were we happy to switch? Our relief was based on our experience of travelling through Manchester the previous year.

This is what happened to us in 2022.

After hearing all the horror stories about the length of time it was taking passengers to get through security, we bought so-called Fast Track tickets.

After checking in (which was surprisingly smooth) we joined the Fast Track queue. For a service described as ‘fast’ it moved remarkably slowly up to the point where one of the security people removed one of the barriers and abruptly (very abruptly in fact) ordered several of us to join another queue. We did as we were told only to discover we had been moved into the slower, general queue for security. So much for paying for Fast Track.

Now I have a certain amount of sympathy for people working in airport security. Anyone who has to deal with the general public will know that people can be difficult to deal with but that is no excuse for the vaguely aggressive attitude being displayed to passengers.

The whole thing was a long and unpleasant experience, matched only by the overcrowded and disorganised chaos at the boarding gate with at least three departures scheduled within an couple of minutes of each other.

Given a Ryanair 737 can hold around 200 passengers, that was pushing 600 people in a tiny area. Again, this was not a pleasant experience.

And so to the return journey. We were forced to queue for more the best part of an hour to get through passport control and the wait for our bags was almost as long.

So yes, the entire Manchester Airport Terminal 3 experience was not one I would be in a hurry to repeat.

I actually made a formal complaint to the airport but didn’t get a reply. Just about sums it up really.

According to to the Guardian report, Sky News contacted Manchester Airport and a spokesman called the research ‘deeply flawed and misleading’, dismissing it as ‘out of date’ and "based on a tiny and unrepresentative sample of the 25 million passengers who travel through Manchester airport every year".

The spokesman added It received a 94 per cent rating from its own survey of 840 passengers in July and August.

What a pity they didn’t ask me. I would have been absolutely delighted to give Manchester Airport the benefit of my views.

I have two final observations. We’re jetting off for a late summer break in a couple of weeks and where are we flying from?

Yes, you guessed it – Manchester Airport Terminal 3.

And as much as I really prefer flying from Liverpool John Lennon, I wonder if the smooth experience is going to be maintained next year when Jet 2 starts operating flights from there.