Manchester Airport Gate 03B

Quick update. The Manchester Airport efficiency I was praising earlier almost failed me as myself and the other eight people on my flight to Edinburgh nearly missed it entirely. After our flight was delayed, it was quite some time before the gate was announced. We were to leave from gate 03. This alone was an adventure, as gate 03 is at the far end of the terminal through an emergency exit/fire door and down three near-deserted hallways and one flight of stairs. Upon arriving, I reunited with Paul and Diane, whom I had lost in security earlier, and we settled in with the few other people who were down there to wait for an announcement. After a bit, Paul suddenly leaped up from his seat.

At this point, the rest of us realized what Paul already had-- our flight was flashing a red "Final Boarding Call" on the flight listing screen and none of us had heard a single announcement directing us to board. Since there's not many of us, we gathered into a nervous little group to wonder what was going on. Were we in the wrong place? Did we miss announcements? At this point, it's important to indicate that we were directed to gate 03. In the area around us, there were gates 03A-03F, but no gate labeled just 03, so to us, it seemed entirely possible that we had ended up in the wrong place. Unfortunately, there also was not a single worker in sight. When one finally appeared, we immediately jumped him to see if he knew what was going on, only to find out he had nothing to do with our flight and didn't know. As he made a call to try to find out, a gate door (03B) opened to reveal that 1. we were not in the wrong place, 2. the nine of us in the room constituted the entire passenger list for our flight and 3. the staff had simply neglected to make a boarding call before changing the announcement board.

So actually, I take back what I said about the Manchester efficient failing. In reality, they were only being too efficient this time. So efficient that they were ready to take off well before we were.