Rick Moranis

Review of Teesside International Airport

Been through this airport and Newcastle (NCL) seve...

Been through this airport and Newcastle (NCL) several times. I have mixed feelings about Teeside (MME) and generally prefer NCL, however I will use this airport if it is significantly cheaper, which has been the case when I have used it previously.

PROS:
1) Arrival from a non UK country (Amsterdam) is relatively fast compared to the messy system of NCL; though I think this is due in part to the smaller planes at Teeside carrying nearly half the passengers as the larger planes that go to Newcastle: less passengers to process.
2) No parking fee for the first 3 hours. In a way this makes up a bit for the 6 pound facility fee that is charged.
CONS:
1) Security is abysmal. I travel a lot, all over the world, and this is the the only airport I've ever been to where I had to empty anything that was even sort of electronic (including cables) from my bags? As if this wasn't enough, security emptied my bags almost completely anyway! They then proceeded to slowly swab many things and even re-scanned my bags! I have to wonder if they did this because they were bored? Sure, not a lot of passengers fly through this airport but the excessive screening was utterly unpleasant. I wouldn't say boarding is much faster than going to NCL due to the excessively slow screening of security at MME. It seems I'm not alone as others have mentioned the slow queues/poor experiences through security.
2) As mentioned, the 6p facility fee. It's odd they couldn't build it into the cost of the ticket and one has to go out of their way to pay this fee. It's apparently going away under the new pubic ownership but as of today is still being implemented (March 14, 2019).