Anyway, got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. I have entry to the MAN T1 Aspire lounge x4. Once for being BA Gold, once for being Finnair J, once for Llyods credit card Priority Pass and once for Amex Priority Pass. The Llyods card allows you to use a couple of resteraunts as well as lounges, so I went to "The Grain Loft" to use my credit. They no longer sell champagne, so the best I could get was a glass of Prossecco. So I won't be wasting my time there in future. It was full of stag and hen parties and pretty noisy. Not much evidence of business travellers. Not much evidence of them in the lounge either, but at least stag and hen parties are banned there.

While I had a bit of time in the airport I had a look round to see if I could get to grips with what is proposed for the future of MAN where the T1 checkin will be used to get to the T3 gates. Discovered that the path for this is where Gate 42\43 are currently just beyond the entrance to the lounges. The transfer path is for staff only at the moment, it was open for the public during covid but since closed down again as there is currently no legitimate reason for pax to transfer T1-T3 airside. While wandering around I found a member of EasyJet ground staff who asked "Can I help you" as I emerged from the entrance to another staff only gate down on the Easyjet pier. We had a nice chat about the plans and what Easyjet thought they might be doing in the future, but it sounds like the plans are all still pretty speculative at the moment.

For some reason (maybe an optical illusion) the apron at MAN looks a bit wobbly




After the lounge, the gate was called, boarded in group 1. Then my first disappointment. The seats in J are the same as those in Y as I expected, but it's a 2-2 configuration so you don't even get the luxury of an empty middle seat like you do with BA. So all you really get for business is a crummy meal, drinks on the flight and lounge access (which I didn't need). In Y you can still get water or blueberry juice so you don't really need to use the BoB service.