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I just had a "connecting" flight done through two separately booked tickets (the service I use did the bookings for me automatically).

I was expecting the airport I was connecting through, Birmingham, to not have facilities to allow bypassing security, but to my surprise it had. For my landing though all the doors were locked and when I asked someone working there, they got told that it was not possible to let us through and I had to go trough security again.

Why would the airport force me to go through security again? I was coming from another UK airport, so I would expect security standards to be the same.

P.S. Some of the suggested questions do not fully apply here because I wasn't moving between two different security borders, I was coming on a national flight, which I would expect to make a difference.

EDIT: to address comments. The doors I'm talking about were doors indicated by the " connections" signal right after landing, before reaching the baggage claim area. The presence of the "connections" signals makes it pretty obvious that the airport has such facilities, and the person working there was unsure why it was closed, they had to ask via radio if they were allowed to open them for us, which they where not. To be more clear, it was two different PNR, but two easyJet flights. The other flight was from the same terminal. (I believe there is only one?)

EDIT2: fixed my example as the change was at Birmingham and not Manchester as I initially wrote.

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    Where exactly did your flight originate from? Which terminal did you arrive at / want to transfer to? ‘Two separately booked tickets’ sounds like self-transfer, which airline(s) and did you have one Passenger Name Record (PNR) for the entire itinerary?
    – Traveller
    Apr 15 at 14:11
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    I don't know Manchester airport at all, but in many multi-terminal airports it's not possible to move from one terminal to another without leaving the secure zone and therefore having to clear security again. You say "all the doors were locked": what doors were locked, in what part of the airport? Had you reached the baggage claim area?
    – phoog
    Apr 15 at 16:53
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    What makes you say Manchester airport has facilities to bypass security for connections? At the very least for international-to-international it doesn’t (no sterile airside transit in that case). But even for domestic connections, if the incoming airline does not handle connections (and the fact that you had a self-connection leans in that direction), it’s quite possible that the only routing they will allow is to baggage claim and exit. Most UK airports, except LHR, do not allow any form of airside connection, whether international or domestic.
    – jcaron
    Apr 15 at 21:42
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    @Anders if it weren’t the case they would have the issue of determining who goes through passport control and who doesn’t need to. Seems unlikely to me that they wouldn’t be segregated at this point.
    – jcaron
    Apr 16 at 9:47
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    "I believe there is only one?" Certainly not, MAN has three major terminals. T1 (the old one), T2 (newer, currently getting expanded, slated to replace T1 completely), and T3 (originally domestic only, now mainly BA, somewhat adjacent to T1). All my flights with easyJet were from/to T1, so I suppose that's probably where you were as well.
    – TooTea
    Apr 16 at 16:51

2 Answers 2

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As far as I know, Easyjet does not offer connecting flights as part of their business model. Thus, the default assumption would be that none of the passengers on your incoming flight have a connecting flight to catch. By keeping the doors for the direct-connection-pathway closed, the overall risk of people ending up somewhere they aren't supposed to is reduced.

With those risks, I don't primarily mean security risks, more stuff like passengers self-connecting with checked-in baggage following the connection-signs and forgetting to collect and recheck their suitcase.

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  • Mmh are you sure about easyJet not having connections? I know the main search engine on their website only finds direct flight, but they also have "worldwide by easyJet" that does give you connecting flights. I haven't used it myself, so I'm only assuming it would be a single PNR for both legs, but I don't know for sure.
    – bracco23
    Apr 17 at 16:27
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    If you look at the "worldwide by easyJet" FAQ easyjet.com/en/help/extra-services/worldwide it talks about "self connections" so I don't think these are true connections.
    – matt freake
    Apr 17 at 17:22
  • @mattfreake thanks, that definitely explains that. I suspect there is still more, as I don't feel that explains why the airport would explicitly stop us from going through, I don't feel they risk enough to explain that.
    – bracco23
    Apr 18 at 9:47
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I don't object with Arno's answer, there can be many reasons.

One reason to closed doors could be that they didn't lead to directly to departures but to transfer security which was closed since no airline offered connections at the time you arrived.

If the doors really lead directly to departures (without security), the airport must be 100% sure that no one arriving from outside the UK could reach the doors (due to the difference in security standard you mentioned). For example, even if only passengers from UK passed the doors you might be mixed with other passengers from outside UK before entering the luggage area, hence the passengers from outside the UK (or the dangerous items they brought) could backtrack to the doors via the route you took but backwards. By closing the doors they might be able to use the gates or passenger paths more efficiently.

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