Travel with Katie Butler: Get to the airport in plenty of time

Katie Butler writes: With extreme weather warnings across Europe (including Tenerife) I know it’s going to be a hot one again!

We (husband, daughter and daughter’s best friend and of course myself), flew from Manchester to Tenerife last Saturday.

Due to Ellie and her friend now at college we were able to travel slightly earlier and avoid the peak school holiday dates.

I did not expect check-in at Manchester airport to be as busy as it was and you actually would have thought it was the start of the holidays.

It was heaving, with queues at check-in longer than I have seen for a number of years.

I was relieved we got to the airport three hours before our flight.

Yes, travel is certainly back to normal.

We were ready for a long wait to get checked in and then we received a text from Jet2: “We are sorry that you are experiencing delays at check-in today, this is due to an airport baggage belt failure which is outside of our control.

"We are working hard with the airport to rectify the situation as quickly as possible.”

That explained the queues and after approximately 50 minutes we were heading for security.

Of course, I was expecting a long wait here, and was starting to get a little anxious that we may end up running to get to our gate on time for our flight.

I needn’t have worried.

What a turnaround from the last couple of years.

We were swiftly through security in only a matter of minutes – no FastTrack required!

However, the baggage belt failure did have an impact on our departure time.

There were a number of passengers who had checked-in after us who were ‘stuck’ at check-in as the baggage belt had virtually stopped moving.

We were sat on the tarmac just short of an hour waiting for the last of the baggage and passengers to make it onboard.

I would definitely recommend you get to the airport three hours before your flight, especially if you are travelling at busy times, as you just never know if you will experience any issues.

On take-off the pilot apologised for our late departure and assured us he would be ‘putting his foot down’ in order to try make up some time.

We also had a decent tail wind behind us and we arrived in Tenerife just 30 minutes later than scheduled.

Baggage claim was pretty quick at the airport with the carousel already moving with suitcases from our flight by the time we reached it.

And so we are here in Tenerife – home for the next fortnight.

A cloudy start for the first couple of days and now it looks like it is going to be extremely hot for the foreseeable.

I’ll be back next week with more on what we have been up to, and of course how we are managing with the heatwave that is seemingly covering many parts of Europe, UK aside.