Leeds Bradford Airport apologise as three hour long queues throw family holidays into chaos

Holidaymakers took to social media in their numbers to criticise the airport.

It comes as airports across the country continue to struggle dealing with the rise in passenger numbers returning to pre-pandemic levels.

With many staff having been let go at the height of the pandemic the airport is now in a race against time to hire and train up new staff.

"Whoever runs this airport should be sacked, no excuses. Absolute shambles. Start of security queue stats out the door." tweeted one angry traveller.

"The given 3 hours isn’t long enough. Witnessing families holidays being ruined as we speak."

Other users described the scenes as 'carnage' and 'a disgrace'.

Another described one hour queues for fast track and three to four hour queues for regular queuing.

"We would like to apologise to those impacted and we’re working hard to overcome these challenges with ongoing recruitment and training activities and more staff being released to the operation from training each week." an, LBA statement read.

"Unfortunately, these current challenges are an industry wide problem, caused by the speed of withdrawal of travel restrictions and testing which has led to the rapid recovery of international travel.

"We are actively managing queues to pull people to the front as their flights near departure, which ensures that very few passengers have missed flights."

One user questioned plans for the airport to expand tweeting:

"3.5hrs in line for security and still not through. They talk about getting bigger, but they can’t handle where they currently are."

Officials at Leeds Bradford remain confident that with additional staff being recruited the situation will return to more normal queuing times in the coming weeks.