Direct ‘lounge to aircraft’ boarding arrives …. at Teesside International

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• Pogonation says:

  28 Apr28 April 11:12

  I used to fly from Tees all the time when I lived in Yarm. It’s a fantastic little airport and flying from there is a dream on account of how few passengers it caters for. I used to do MME-AMS every month and the average time from entering the front door of terminal to being sat down in the departures lounge was 3 mins.

  This boarding from lounge will not save much time but is still a nice little perk that makes flying from MME even smoother!

• daveinitalia says:

  28 Apr28 April 12:03

  Let’s have some perspective here. MME has one security channel (or at least did when they rolled out the new scanner) so being the first airport to offer it wasn’t really a massive achievement. It was good publicity for the airport as the news often neglected to mention the fact. I remember in NCL the week after that was announced a passenger asked why Newcastle didn’t have the new scanners yet and Teesside did, they replied it’s a lot easier if you have only one scanner to replace!

  Also Teesside only has one lounge according to their website (the Rockliffe lounge). “The Middleton” still exists but now needs to be booked in advance. It’s basically an area group bookers can use for their own private use – so effectively a way to keep stag dos out of the regular lounge (assuming they’re aware of this option and book it)

  • SteveChease says:

    28 Apr28 April 14:41

    Flew from there last week, I’m sure there were two now!

    (Only one in use)

    • Tariq says:

      28 Apr28 April 14:48

      Given that it’s a mission critical piece of the operational infrastructure, it would seem sensible to have at least two.

      • daveinitalia says:

        28 Apr28 April 14:50

        I was thinking that after I wrote it, but I did hear from a few sources at the time that the airport only had one lane. My guess is they probably have only one in operation at normal times but have a backup. It’ll be interesting to see whether they’d ever have two in operation.

• Michael Gell says:

  28 Apr28 April 12:06

  I’m there in 5 hours lol

• sayling says:

  28 Apr28 April 12:35

  If exiting the lounge straight on to the tarmac counts as ‘direct lounge to plane’, the Orkneys would like a word about that claim (certainly when I flew from there mid 2000s)

  • daveinitalia says:

    28 Apr28 April 13:28

    They also beat Teesside in not needing to take liquids and laptops out of your bags. Teesside has one security scanner, they had none!

• NorthernLass says:

  28 Apr28 April 16:34

  Our one and only experience of boarding from the lounge (at BOS in early 2022) was marred somewhat by the gate agent freaking out because our final destination was MAN, and she couldn’t find the covid regulations for Manchester, and didn’t understand that Manchester is actually in England, and had the same rules as the rest of England (by that point, anyway 😂).

• James says:

  28 Apr28 April 21:05

  I remember when the proper Concorde Lounge had that !

• Mutley says:

  29 Apr29 April 10:27

  Try getting to Teesside Airport by public transport (despite being lauded by the soon to be ex Mayor) there is one train per week, yes 1 per week on a Sunday, and a pitiful bus service from Darlington. Even if you could get there , the only flights are to Amsterdam. Mind you, if you got off your head on the delights of Teesside’s only destination it would make coming back to Middlesbrough a bit more palatable.

• James Harper says:

  29 Apr29 April 17:49

  This certainly isn’t new but I suspect the origins are lost in the midst of time and neither the writer of this piece nor anyone at Teesside remembers when boarding from the lounge started.

  Back in the day when British Midland Airways was a proper airline (until it was confused with bmi branding and no particular service model) there was a Diamond Club lounge (*G) at Teesside as well as a business class lounge situated behind it. The Diamond Club lounge had an apron view and direct access for boarding which was always by steps at MME but just a short walk from the lounge.

  At the time BD operated at least five daily rotations MME-LHR mostly with a based aircraft which graduated from BAC 1-11s, Viscounts after the 1-11s were disposed of, DC-9s of various sizes, 732s (leased) 733s, 734s and 735s. Finally the A319 and A320 featured but by that time the BD product was so confused no one knew what they were buying and strong competition on the East Coast Mainline resulted in an ever reduced service to a point where it was no longer viable and BD withdrew.

  At LHR there was also often direct boarding from the lounge at gate four (Diamond Club doors please 😉 or at least a gate close by. They made travel easy, it’s such a shame they lost the plot and ran scared of the comptetion instead of facing it head on as they always had done.

  • TurningLeftAgain says:

    4 May4 May 07:48

    Thank you James, that brought back happy memories of flying MME-LHR in the 80s and 90s.

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