An angry holidaymaker has spoken of the 'chaos' at Manchester Airport as Home Office staff struggled to cope with a large number of arriving passengers.
Pictures show passport control queues, piled up baggage on a conveyor belt and traffic gridlock outside.
Stewart Imeson took the photographs after arriving into Manchester on a Thomas Cook flight from Palma on Sunday, June 26.
He said: “I’ve never seen anything like the chaos that day. Queues to get through customs started almost as soon as we left the plane and it took 45 minutes to even reach passport control.
“There was a single member of Manchester Airport staff running up and down the corridor queues asking for families with children under 12 to go straight to the front, which only resulted in everyone else waiting even longer to move.”
Further trouble ensued at the baggage hall, where Stewart photographed suitcases blocking the conveyor.
He added: “Our suitcases emerged over an hour after we left the plane, possibly because two arrivals were sharing the same conveyor.”
Outside the arrivals building, there was more chaos.
Stewart and his family were faced with gridlock as cars queued to reach Terminal One to drop passengers off. They gave up waiting for their park and ride bus and walked instead.
He added: “Surely on the grounds of safety and the passenger experience, the volume of flights should be limited to the capacity the airport can handle?”
A Home Office spokesman said on June 26 some queues failed to meet their targets of 95 per cent of EEA passengers getting through in 25 minutes, with a 45-minute standard for non-EEA travellers.
He added: “Queues may occur if a significant number of flights arrive outside their scheduled arrival times or if there are a large number of non-EEA passengers, which take longer to process. E-gates are used for all eligible passengers.
“Our priority is to maintain the security of the border. All available resources were deployed at the airport to cope with the variations in the scheduled arrival times. All passengers were seen as quickly as possible”.
A Manchester Airport spokesman, said: “Manchester Airport prides itself in ensuring that all passengers’ journeys through the airport are as smooth as possible.
"We work closely with all our partners on site to ensure they provide sufficient resources to meet scheduled customer demand. We apologise to any customer who feels they have had a negative experience and will be raising their concerns with the partners involved.”
