Travel to Manchester Airport is one of the major markets for TransPennine Express, but the train operator doesn’t always serve its airport passengers well. I travelled from Huddersfield to Manchester Piccadilly on a late running Middlesbrough – Manchester Airport service on 24 July. The train was 14 minutes late from Huddersfield, but even this far back it was shown as going to Piccadilly only. The conductor apologised, and promised passengers for the airport that if they stayed on platform 13 at Piccadilly they could expect another train to the airport in six or seven minutes.
I stayed to watch what happened. A Northern service to Alderley Edge and an East Midlands train to Norwich went through, pretty much on time, then a late running TPE Edinburgh – Manchester Airport train arrived, but was also terminated short. The first Airport service was the following North TransPennine service from Newcastle, so the luckless airport passengers from both the Middlesbrough and Edinburgh trains had to change, and would have got to the airport 32 and 21 minutes late respectively – and there were a lot of them.
So how often does this happen? On that day, eight TPE services were terminated short, and another one w…
