Birmingham: Airport Security, Immigration & Border Control

[Aviador]

The Daily Mail is featuring this video showing the queue after the recent changes.

I did try to post the vid but it didn't work.

 

[Nethercote2019]

Just heard BHX advert on smooth radio explaining about liquid rules thru security …

 

[TM3]

Nick Barton did a Q&A on the subject in Birmingham Live.

Birmingham Airport Q&A - queues, liquids and passenger confusion

From plastic bags and wait times to the possibility of a theme park style queueing system, we put the most asked questions from travellers to Birmingham Airport

www.birminghammail.co.uk

He basically admits further down that the congestion is caused by too many Lo-Cost ops in the morning.

If the airport is already full in the morning what are the chances of winning more scheduled daily routes like Iberia or TAP for example? Anything to the US would also be expected to leave in the morning, could the airport accomodate another wideboy in the morning or even a capacity increase on the likes of Qatar?

Another customer in Coventy Live regretting choosing Birmingham for a flight to Sydney due to the early morning queues:

Father blasts BHX for not 'prioritising women and children' due to long queues

Andy Moore paid £2,400 to upgrade to priority tickets with Qatar Airways for his daughter Melissa, her partner Jack and their 6-month old baby.

www.coventrytelegraph.net

 

[GliderPilot]

Crazy it took this long for the airport to take even the tiniest shred of accountability, after deflecting everything they could.

 

[TM3]

*widebody.

 

[rollo]

On April 14th a BHX spokesperson informed us that security queues are the new normal and to get used to it. Since then various othe reasons or should we say excuses have been given including passenger arriving late, too early, government changed the liquid rules back to what they have been for years now too many Lo-Cost operators in the early mornining in fact just about anything but the airport taking any responsibility yet BHX is the stand out airport with these security processing issues.

The airport 100% owns the problem by dint of failed planning and management. At the beginning of June Mr Barton told us in 6 weeks time the issues would be resolved that deadline is fast approaching, place your bets remembering we will be slap bang in peak season.

 

[Ray Finkle]

The airport saying that '75% of pax waited less than 20 minutes and even at peak times the queue was less than 60 minutes' despite the fact that the reporter had been through twice and taken 1hr 53 and 1hr 15 🤦‍♂️

 

[Matt995]

long departures delays again this afternoon, 2 or 3 hour delays often the normal!!

I hate to think where the airport will come in the next uk airport surveys in regards to customer satifaction, and flight delays, why does the word "bottom" spring to mind?

 

[TM3]

The airport saying that '75% of pax waited less than 20 minutes and even at peak times the queue was less than 60 minutes' despite the fact that the reporter had been through twice and taken 1hr 53 and 1hr 15 🤦‍♂️

There are 3 kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics.

 

[Deleted member 8277]

There are 3 kinds of lies; lies, damned lies and statistics.

Lies, Paula vennells lies and Nick barton lies. Who is he trying to kid.

 

[TM3]

It disappoints me that given the access journalists have in these situations they fail to ask meaningful and probing questions.

The obvious follow up question here is how long do the other 25% wait?

I imagine these are the passengers who are arriving in the eariest and busiest segment of the day and waiting the longest.

Also I wonder how the airport captures how long I have been waiting if I arrive at 4am and join the queue in the carpark.

At the risk of stating the obvious again it appears that the 25% of the day that sees passengers experience long waits has too many flights scheduled in it.

As far as I understand the airport (unlike Heathrow) has no restrictions on opening and closing times for flights, maybe they should use this time for flights to places like Rhodes and Crete where there is a circa 4 hr flight and 2 hour time difference. So you could actually be departing at 1am and arriving at these airports about 7am. Then you get the whole day in the resort.

In the article NB says no need to change flight schedules, once PAX can take 2l everything will be fine - who knows when this directive will change, hopefully some movement on that soon.

 

[rollo]

The problem is that the media in general just report without question what the individual they talk to says so in effect we get the BHX spin or version of events, meanwhile a real journalist (think Andrew Neil for example) will question and investigate before producing a report.

 

[Jon Dempsey]

Travelled through on 19th June and returned yesterday.
The scanners work faster than the old scanners, but the idiot idea of replacing escalators with lifts is pathetic.
My friend travelled through the other morning and apparently was asked to use the escalator by Jet2 bag drop .

The thing which struck me was the cleanliness of the place - it was filthy. Even in the downstairs gents, where a queue was building up, there were two missing doors from toilets - I wonder how long that has been the case.

 

[Vile8er]

The thing which struck me was the cleanliness of the place - it was filthy. Even in the downstairs gents, where a queue was building up, there were two missing doors from toilets - I wonder how long that has been the case.

Agreed it was filthy when I travelled through recently. Cant understand why it's not noticed by staff and something done to rectify the issues as it's not difficult.

 

[richard winterbourn]

Arrived via the airbridge this morning at 0900 and just walked straight through. Took less than a minute before I was the other side of duty free.

Very impressed, state-of-art facility, spacious and light. Fantastic....

Spread the word, pass it on...

 

[Jon Dempsey]

Arrived via the airbridge this morning at 0900 and just walked straight through. Took less than a minute before I was the other side of duty free.

Very impressed, state-of-art facility, spacious and light. Fantastic....

Spread the word, pass it on...

There was still building work going on when we went through (19th June). The processing was a lot quicker, just access to security needed expanding.
Going back through in September so it will be interesting to see how things are then.
Social media seems to report a big improvement in the queueing so fingers crossed.

@big vern what do you see as you work at the airport?

 

[richard winterbourn]

I am not interested in the hyperbole either from the media or others who keep on about the job isn't finished.

I want to get through into the departures lounge as quick as I can and yesterday it took less than two minutes. End of!

But I will repeat: what they are building is state-of-the art and very impressive and it is going to be fast.

Maybe, at the busiest times, there will have to be queueing. To those who say this, you try and use Terminal 3 at Manchester. That puts everything into perspective tive.

 

[HPsauce]

Well said, Richard.
I always ask people i know that are using BHX in recent weeks, and find that they have a good, swift experience on the whole.
True, there were hiccups in the change over period, but that is long gone now.
The damage the media do these days is really annoying, by blowing up stories to fill a few minutes of airtime, or click bait is quite depressing, without thought for the public.

 

[KARFA]

Airport spells out key to cutting down queues as security wait drops to minutes

Birmingham Airport reveals to BirminghamLive their security wait times have dropped to an average of 22 minutes

www.birminghammail.co.uk

A BHX spokesperson told BirminghamLive on July 8: "As it stands today so far our average security waiting time is 22 minutes."

If all these people are claiming to get thro in minutes are accurate, there must be quite a few waiting well over 40 mins to get this 22 average 🙂

 

[rollo]

Never mind the average figure I would like to know the figures for peak times particularly the morning wave because the system should be able to cope with that level of demand.
More importantly how is it measured as so far as I can see they can only accurately measure from the scanning of your boarding card so do they take account of passengers queuing to enter the terminal, then the lifts and then queuing for the scanning of boarding cards before actually entering the security area.

Having said that from what is possible to glean the situation does appear to be improving.