Thousands of passengers had to line up in front of Birmingham and Manchester airports terminals, and dozens missed flights in chaotic scenes highlighting the aviation industry’s struggle to return to normal service before the pandemic.
The shortage of staff, which led to congested terminals during Easter and widespread flight cancellations, continued, with Birmingham deciding to move passengers outside to separate check-in from security lines.
Travelers describe the experience as “manic” and “absolute chaos” on social media. One Manchester resident, who described himself as a regular pilot, tweeted that he had “never seen him so badly” as queues of people stretched out in front of airport buildings early in the morning.
Airports and carriers have blamed staff shortages for the long queues facing passengers across the country in recent weeks. Many lost staff during the pandemic, some due to redundancies, but also as employees who left to take other jobs elsewhere.
Most are in the process of re-hiring thousands of employees, with travel demand rising after the lifting of Covid’s travel restrictions in the UK. But the rush to recruit has been accompanied by long waits for security checks, and the lack of staff amid high coronavirus levels has made matters worse.
Airport queues have contributed to airlines’ decisions to exclude flights from their schedules – although both are also struggling with staff shortages, a combination of the Omicron variant being distributed at their bases and the length of time for approving new employees.
British Airways canceled about 10% of its daily flights by the end of October. A spokesman said: “As we step up our operation, we are also building more resilience in our flight program. One of the ways we do this is by reducing our schedule in advance to give our customers security and opportunities when possible. ”
EasyJet said it hoped not to cancel more flights after the end of May, but added that it was physically removing the seats of about 50 of its A319s to allow them to work with three instead of four cabin crews when it appeared. staff shortage.
Birmingham Airport (BHX) said its queues were “long but manageable and moving”. It says it has decided to release security guards outside the terminal’s buildings to avoid crossing with people waiting to be inspected. About 15,000 passengers were due to leave on Monday, half of them in the early hours of the morning.
It adds: “Of the 7,500 customers booked for departure by BHX at today’s peak of dawn, 99.7% successfully caught their flight. Anyone who missed it was booked again. “
The airport apologized and urged passengers to be prepared to pass security to minimize delays: “Our message to departing customers is: help us help you keep your queues by removing all liquids, gels, pastes and electrical items from your bags before our security x-ray scanners. “
She laid off almost half of her staff during the pandemic when travel restrictions hit his business. The airport began looking for new staff in November and said it expects more security personnel to be ready to start work soon.
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Manchester Airport said it still had longer than usual security queues at times, including Monday morning, but was constantly recruiting new staff to deal with the problem. It says that most passengers pass the guard in 30-40 minutes, although the queues can be more than twice as long.
The airport advised passengers to arrive three hours before the time of departure of the flight, but not to arrive earlier, so as not to increase congestion at the terminals.
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