What is Aether?Is this the most exciting launch at a UK Airport?
The greatest thing an airport can do is launch a product that lets you avoid the airport itself. Aether is Manchester Airport’s answer to the various levels of discomfort that you can expect in their terminals. The solution is to pay up to £340 each. It’s a brilliant business move and a great one for the residents of Greater Manchester, who all own a slice of MAN through their councils. The bigger question is: is it good for the traveller? I’m booked in later this month to try it out.
What is Aether?
Formerly known as PremAir, it’s a “private terminal” (small building) that sits away from the main terminals. Using Aether means you only enter the airport building at the very last minute – when you board the plane. You can park up or get dropped off at Aether, go through security there, and await your flight in their lounge. When it’s time to board, you’ll be driven to the plane.
How much does Aether cost?
To get the full experience, for an outbound and inbounch flight you’re looking at £340 per person.
Outbound (Flying from MAN)
- Hand baggage, express (no food or drink) – £90 per person
- Hand baggage, full experience (inc. food and drink) – £150 per person
- Checked baggage, full experience (inc. food and drink) – £170 per person
Inbound (Flying into MAN)
- Hand baggage, full experience (inc. food and drink) – £150 per person
- Checked baggage, full experience (inc. food and drink) – £170 per person
It’s a little confusing if the cheapest (express) option allows you to sit in the private terminal. The language is woolly, which is why we ended up paying for the full experience package even though we didn’t really need it.
Car parking is an additional cost, and when I’ve looked previously, this is at a premium to the car parking at the main terminals. Parking for four nights at the end of November costs £132. Parking is non-refundable, nor can you amend it whereas the booking for Aether itself can be partially refunded.
How to book Aether
This is where the premium experience becomes a little less elevated. I did some dummy bookings before I made an actual booking, and I kept running into an issue where I entered all my information, and it then told me that my session had timed out. Even returning to the site weeks later, I still had this problem.
This was annoying as you can’t just jump in and look at availability without entering a tonne of information. They need to know your first name, email, number of guests, the dates and times of both the outbound and inbound flights, the airline you’re flying with and whether you have checked baggage or cabin baggage. That’s a lot of information to enter twice.
After successfully entering all that information, you’ll be given your pricing options. This part is easy – just select the package you want.
You then have to check out and re-enter some of the information you entered a few minutes ago, which is frustrating. After you share your credit card details, you’ll be done with this process, right? Wrong.
If you need car parking you’ll have to go through a similar checkout process again – entering all that same information again.
You’ll get an email from Aether confirming your booking and outlining even more work you need to do.
You have to return to their site to create an account, verify your email, and enter more information. Aether has said that if you don’t complete this process more than 24 hours before your flight, you can’t use the facilities. At least they carry forward some of the information you have previously entered, but they also need your date of birth, passport number, a scan of it, the expiry date, issuing country, nationality, and information on each passenger, plus information on your luggage.
Finally, if you’re using Aether on an outbound and inbound flight you have to enter passport details and upload an image of your passport twice. Once for each passenger on the outbound, and then the same again on the return. Madness.
To put it bluntly, the CX, before you’ve even walked through the doors, is miserable.
Am I looking forward to using Aether?
Yes and no. We’re always excited about trying new things around travel (and reporting back on them). My fear is that the press releases are disconnected from the reality. Booking Aether was unnecessarily clunky and annoying, which is typical of MAG, so my main concern is that the experience itself is going way off what’s been promised.
I’m looking forward to reporting back on what the experience was like at the end of November.
