One passenger who arrived at Terminal 2 early this morning said he faced an hour-long wait to check-in his bag and then another two-hour queue to pass through security. The man took photos of lines of people weaving through the terminal.
“It’s madness”, he told the Manchester Evening News. “It took two hours to get through security and they were shouting at people who had flights at 7.30am or 8.30am to run through as time was running out.”
Other passengers took to social media to vent their frustrations about the early morning queues.
Paul Johnson tweeted this morning: “Disaster at Manchester Airport security. 2 hours and still not through!”
Alex said in a tweet at 5.50am: “That was horrendous. Left at 2am for my 6:10am flight. Arrived 3am. 70 minutes queueing to get into the airport and check my back. Another 70 minutes to get through security. Just got airside as the gate was announced.”
Adrian tweeted at 5.35am: “@manairport Dreadful experience again this morning in the “state of the art” T2. Poor ventilation, massive queue. Really, really poor.”
The airport said this morning that wait times for security in Terminal 2 peaked at 85 minutes. This was between around 5.30am and 7.30am.
The wait time has now gone back down to 15 minutes. Passengers are being advised to expect security queues of ‘up to 90 minutes on occasion’.
This comes after a chaotic half-term week of holiday cancellations, mammoth flight delays and missing luggage at Manchester Airport.
Reports over the Jubilee weekend included queues which extended into car parks, missing baggage spotted from 1,300 miles away, police rescues after flights failed to take off and even food shortages for those passengers actually able to board their flights.
More than 30,000 TUI customers have also received messages cancelling their trips, while easyJet and Jet2.com passengers have also been affected.
Manchester Airport has blamed staff shortages in both the TUI and Swissport operations, a problem which they say is blighting the travel industry more widely.
Just last month, the airport issued a candid apology over its staffing crisis.
Passengers are still being advised to arrive at the airport three hours before their flights.
