Birmingham Airport: Pictures surface of huge queues snaking outside building as May half term begins with airport slammed as a 'shambles'

Birmingham Airport has been slammed as a “shambles” this morning (Saturday 25 May) as pictures surfacing on social media show huge queues snaking outside of the building. One person wrote on Twitter, formerly X: “06:50 and I’m queuing to get into Birmingham Airport because of the security delays. What a shambles!”.

Another user posted a photo of the queues and wrote “this should be fun?!?”. The pictures of the huge queues come as the May half term begins as well as the late May bank holiday weekend with lots expected to be jetting off abroad on holidays. 

Birmingham Airport has been hitting the headlines recently due to long queues forming. The BBC reported yesterday (24 May) that it took some people 90 minutes to get through security. The airport has said it "has been a working building site for 18 months, and continues to be, while we build for our future with a new security area".

The airport told BBC News: "We have fully resourced this day with our customers teams, and additional colleagues, from across the business and they are in the terminal assisting passengers on this forecasted busy day. We have had a steady queue since security opened and it is busy in the terminal. Customers will be using unfamiliar routes around the airport as we build our new security area and for this we apologise."

Birmingham Airport has recently been slammed as an “absolute disgrace” after passenger’s missed a flight to Alicante in Spain due to “not enough” staff “trained for new scanners”. Simon Porter told NationalWorld that he and his friend missed their Ryanair flight which was scheduled to take off at 8.30am on Monday 29 April, despite turning up before 6am with only carry-on bags with them.

Mr Porter said he rebooked on the 5.45pm flight to Alicante via mobile and stayed in departures all day. He added that “no food, drink or area was provided by the airport, Ryanair or the Swissair facilities providers.”

He said he believes that the chaos was due to issues in security which he had reaffirmed to him by an airport employee. He said there seemed to “be not enough trained staff for new scanners, not enough scanners online, IT software crashes (nationwide) and people understandably turning up too early.” He added: “It was absolute chaos and unsafe, hence the arrival of police.”

A Birmingham Airport spokesperson said: “We are sorry to hear about Ms Sweeney and Mr Porter’s experience at Birmingham Airport, this is not the service we aim to deliver. We can confirm that we are in contact with them and the complaint is with our customer agents to investigate.”