Under fire Birmingham Airport bosses have dismissed claims of long wait times repeatedly reported by passengers and witnessed by our reporter twice a week. BirminghamLive reports on long queues to get through security, which first came to light in May and became almost daily in June.
A couple reported a wait of one hour and 45 minutes on Sunday, June 9, and days earlier, on Thursday, June 6, a delay of one hour and 17 minutes was reported. While another said they had been queuing for two hours and had not taken the lift to take them to the top floor, queuing towards the security scanning hall on Monday 17 June.
Our reporter, Nick Horner, has flown from Birmingham Airport twice in less than a week. First on Sunday, June 16, with a 7:45 a.m. flight, which he thought took a good three hours and twenty minutes, which was quickly eaten up with a wait of exactly one hour and 53 minutes to get through security, from the back in line to access the duty-free shop.
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You can see his article on the queue here, with a video showing the full extent of the queue below and waiting through the security queue at Dusseldorf airport, a stark comparison. His Queue X-thread has been read by over 100,000 people.
And a second trip (both times to Germany to watch England) on Thursday (20 June), this time at 9.10am, arriving at the back of the queue at 6am. This time the security line was one hour and 15 minutes. An improvement, but no match with the 11 minutes time in Düsseldorf to get through security and 20 minutes at a busy airport in Frankfurt on Friday (June 21).
A striking difference the second time was that an extra bag scanning machine or lane was in use – 20 percent more capacity. Moreover, it was a weekday and not a weekend.
BirminghamLive asked Birmingham Airport a series of questions about the issues passengers have been raising with us and on social media. We will have a full story about this soon.
But one response stated that the wait times were not as bad as suggested, something our reporter strongly objected to, having taken photos at both ends as ‘evidence’ of the queue.
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Our question to the BHX staff about what may have affected the wait time was why two bag scanning machines were not in use. on Sunday June 16. The question was asked before Nick went to Germany for the second time – when six machines were used and the wait dropped dramatically.
We asked: “Why were there only 5 lanes in use on Sunday (June 16) when the queue was two hours long? Will there come a time when all seven are fully operational?”
And in response, BHX denied the long lines our reporter experienced that day, saying the maximum delay was “less than an hour.” And the airport also claims that the average wait time for 75 percent of passengers is “less than 20 minutes.”
The airport’s full response: “The queue was less than two hours on Sunday. Seventy-five percent of our transit customers waited less than 20 minutes for security. Even at our very busy peak morning, the queue was less than 60 minutes to access security.
“Lane use is based on passenger demand and flow. At the time you refer to, three out of four passengers were processed in less than twenty minutes.”