Visualizing wait times at Terminal 2 Manchester Airport

I love data analysis and I love reporting. That is why when were looking to book a family holiday a few years ago in 2022, with me being overly concerned about the wait times that were at Manchester Airport. For those who don’t remember this was a pretty tumulous period for security wait times. We were looking at flights that would fly out of Terminal 2. I noticed that the Manchester Airport site had a widget that included estimated wait times. You can see this on their website actually at the top of their page: Manchester Airport

While the Manchester Airport website doesn’t surface this information to you as the exact amount of minutes, if you look at the data that is powering this underneath, it’s actually a call that brings back data from an API which includes the exact number of hours and minutes:

 "terminals": [
        {
          "hours": 0,
          "minutes": 0,
          "name": "T2"
        }
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This was exciting to me (as a data nerd) at the time because it meant with a simple script I could pull back data every 15 minutes for a week or two and see how the waiting times were over time and see if it was really that big of a problem.

In typical Gavsto style, I accidentally left this running for the next three years

That left me with a unique opportunity to look at how security times had evolved since 2022. Obviously this information is only as accurate as the data being given to it. I have no insight into how accurate the wait times are that Manchester Airport report. But assuming they are accurate they paint an interesting picture.

Average Wait Time by Day and Hour at Manchester Airport Terminal 2 (2022-2025)

Unsurprisingly, average wait times tend to be highest in the early mornings. Monday and Friday stand out as days where the wait time seems increased compared to other days. Afternoons and evenings show much lower wait times across all days. Weekends are relatively calmer, especially in the middle of the day which is not what I was expecting.

Average Wait Time by Month at Manchester Airport Terminal 2 (2022-2025)

Again, not a shocker that the busiest months are between May and October and that winter months have lower wait times. July seems like it is the busiest month to fly in terms of a security wait.

Average Security Wait Times on a 7-day rolling average (2022-2025)

I think this is the most interesting graph:

This shows that Manchester Airport have seemingly done a very good job of minimising the wait times they have in Terminal 2 over the last few years. 2022 was obviously the most all over the place, likely due to difficulties in hiring enough security officers following the post covid boom. We can see there was some stress in the summer months of 2023, but significantly decreased from 2022. In 2024 it was almost smoothed out. It’s clear from the data Manchester Airport have been working hard to get the numbers down.

2024 Only - Average Wait Time by Day and Hour

If we look at just 2024, we can see the it’s so smoothed out that the highlighting this as a heat map is not particularly fair as we’re talking the difference of a few minutes.

I’m next flying from Mancehster Airport Terminal 2 in early May. I look forward to my next visit through security there which apparently should have me waiting no more than a few minutes!

If you would like to see the raw data I collected, it’s available right here.