Birmingham Airport passengers 'out of pocket' after buying new flights due to 'chaos'

People claim to have been left out of pocket after ‘chaos’ at Birmingham Airport. As reported by CoventryLive some passengers missed their flights earlier this week due to a ‘technical issue’ at security.

One individual reportedly collapsed amid the havoc, branded an ‘absolute shambles’ by travellers. A spokesman for Birmingham Airport has apologised.

Now, other passengers have told the BBC that the issues have left them out of pocket. Birmingham-based student Lily-Rose Watkins said she missed her original departure from BHX to Alicante for a three-day holiday with friends. But after waiting three hours to get through security they missed their flight. She spent £100 to get to Bristol Airport by train and missed one day of their trip.

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Another passenger, Roger Burton, also missed his flight to Alicante and told the BBC that he had to spend £165 for a new flight and more on the cost of further taxi fares to the airport. He said passengers had been ‘herded like cattle’ and there was a ‘crush of people’ waiting for lifts.

A spokesman for Birmingham Airport said: "We saw a usual busy Monday morning at Birmingham Airport with customers queuing downstairs, which is the new normal, as the upstairs queuing area has been taken out of service as we construct our new security area."

"This morning [Monday] we encountered a technical issue with our security lanes, which compounded the peak departure schedule and hindered our operation. We sincerely apologise to our customers for the level of service that they received, this is not what we aim to deliver here at Birmingham Airport."

"We wish to remind our customers that existing security restrictions remain in place. This can be confusing to our customers and on average 15 per cent of bags are rejected as they are not compliant with current security restrictions. For each customer, a non-compliant bag adds ten minutes on top of their security search time."

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