Passengers miss flights due to airport queues – as fears grow for half term hols

BRITS hoping to go on holiday for a pre-summer getaway have faced more queues at the airport this morning.

Both Manchester Airport and Birmingham Airport passengers complained of long waits at the airport, with some even missing their flights.

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Two-hour queues at Manchester were reported this morning with queues stretching out to the car park.

One passenger tweeted: “Queue for security at @manairport now stretching outside the Terminal building.”

Some even missed their flights with one woman saying: “Absolute disgrace my sister is in tears after missing her flight because of security.

“Begged security staff to fast track her thru as gate was closing no one cares. Disgrace!”

A third said: “Absolute shambles @manairport T3. There will be hundreds missing flights and there have been no announcements since I arrived an hour and a half ago! Disgusting.”

Others said they had to wait two hours in the fast track queue, with many claiming it was even slower than the usual queues.

While at Birmingham, many slammed the queues as “ridiculous”.

One woman said: “Have never seen queues like that anywhere …just to get in the building. 95 minutes to get to security is too much.”

A second said: “Absolute chaos at @bhx_official #birminghamairport this morning, it took two hours to get through check-in and security with kilometric queues. Get there at least 3 hours before.”

The queues are just days after TUI passengers were forced to queue out of the airport doors at Birmingham Airport.

Shocking pictures showed the huge line snaking around the airport building – with holidaymakers unable to even get inside the terminal.

There are now fears the travel mayhem could continue for the next year.

Kully Sandhu, managing director of the Aviation Recruitment Network, warned it could take “at least the next 12 months for the industry, vacancy wise, to settle down”.

He said it wasn’t just Covid causing problems in hiring new staff, of which he said there were more than 300 vacancies across UK airports, but also Brexit.

EasyJet is set to remove a number of seats on its flights so that the airline can fly with less crew onboard in the next few months.

And British Airways is to axe 16,000 flights with 10 per cent of flights affected between March and Autumn.

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