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Take the northern rail to Manchester airport

I never usually write bad reviews because I don’t really see the point, but I’m doing this partly just to vent.This is about an experience I had travelling from Liverpool to Manchester Airport.I booked an early train with plenty of time to catch my flight. The journey involved one change at Manchester Victoria, with an 11-minute connection, which should have been more than enough. However, when we arrived near Manchester Victoria, the train was held outside the station waiting for a signal — for 15 minutes.I assumed it would make sense to hold the connecting train, especially as it was the same company and there were multiple passengers making the same connection. Instead, we were told “sorry” and given two options: wait 50 minutes for the next train or take the tram, which takes 56 minutes. I had no choice but to take the tram and pay for it myself.I can only claim back 25% of my journey, which barely covers anything — but that’s not even the worst part. If I had missed my flight because of this delay, they wouldn’t be liable at all. There’s absolutely no consideration for passengers. They won’t delay another train to avoid extra claims, but they’re perfectly fine with people missing flights because “it’s not their fault”.Another thing that really annoyed me happened before the journey even started. Due to a cancellation, they announced that passengers must make sure they get on the correct train and that switching trains would not be allowed. Despite the disruption, they still wouldn’t allow passengers to transfer — another example of pure greed.I’d honestly recommend paying extra for a direct train with Northern Rail if you can. Trust me, you don’t want to have to create a separate account just to claim compensation, fill out forms, upload PDFs, and then retype all the information from the PDFs into a text box anyway.I don’t feel any better after writing this, but I’m still going to post it.

Date of experience: Dec 15, 2025