Birmingham Airport queues mean family miss Brazil flights, they claim
Heartbroken pensioners may have to wait another year to meet their grandson after Birmingham Airport queues scuppered a dream trip to Brazil.
Jean and Bob Hamilton, from Tamworth, missed their connecting easyJet flight to Portugal due to security lounge chaos on the 23rd of May.Despite checking in online and dropping off bags in good time, the husband and wife claim they were forced to wait in line for two hours. Their gate was closed by the time they were finally through - leaving them among "several people" to miss flights.They had been due to visit South America to visit their son and his wife - who has recently given birth. The fate of £3,000 they shelled out on air travel remains unknown.
Birmingham Airport said peak waits on the day to get through security were 45 minutes and asked the couple to provide more details for the matter to be investigated. Easyjet said they would be contacting the family.Jean said, "When we got to security there were hundreds and hundreds of people queuing. This caused very long delays and it took us two hours to get through."The gate for our flight had closed and we were told we couldn’t board. We spoke to airline staff who said several people had missed their flights due to the queues at security.""We were told we could get on another flight but it would cost £110 each plus €1600 each for the connecting flight at Lisbon. We do not have that kind of money."
A spokesperson from BHX said the travel hub rejected the claim they were waiting for two hours but promised to investigate.A statement read: "We sympathise with anyone who misses their flight as this is always distressing. Our data shows us that on the day in question, peak waiting time in the BHX security area was 45 mins, that 83 per cent of passengers cleared security in under 20 minutes."An easyJet spokesperson added: "We are sorry to hear that the Armstrong family arrived too late to the gate to board their flight to Lisbon after being delayed through security."