Birmingham Airport: 'Carnage' at 'chaotic' airport as passengers share videos and pictures of queues that are 'all over the place'

“Chaotic” scenes were witnessed at Birmingham Airport on Friday morning (14 June) at around 4am as passengers waited in queues that were “all over the place”. Passengers shared videos and pictures on X, formerly Twitter, showing huge queues snaking outside of the building. 

Darren Porter wrote “utter chaos again, queues all over the place” while another user posted on X “four lanes of queuing just to get inside #BirminghamAirport - the queues are moving and people are generally cheerful about it all, but it’s all a bit chaotic!”, adding a picture of the queues.

Paul Taylor posted: “Get to Birmingham Airport early. It’s chaos. 4:00 am.” The huge queues come after a U-turn in hand-luggage liquid limits at the airport which is adding to severe delays through security.

People have been urged to turn up at the airport three hours before their flight is due to take-off, in order to allow the extra time to get through the chaos. A £60m investment to upgrade its security desks with hi-tech scanners, known as Next Generation Security Checkpoints (NGSC), was installed and was supposed to make the security process more seamless, allowing people to bring more liquids in their hand luggage. However, this new method reportedly made situations worse and the government reversed the rule change before the summer holidays.

A Birmingham Airport spokesperson previously blamed the queues on people who arrived with more than 100ml of liquids in their bags. Birmingham Airport CEO Mr Barton also previously said: "A non-compliant bag with liquids over 100ml can add up to 20 minutes to each passenger's journey through security."

Mr Barton told the BBC: "Since opening our new security area, and despite being one of the first UK airports to comply, we have been limited on the use of our multi-million-pound equipment due to an outstanding regulatory restriction meaning we had to limit liquids to 100ml. Despite the 100ml rule still being in place, we continually have non-compliant bags with liquids over the allowance which have led to inefficiencies of our equipment and resulted in extended queuing time for customers.

“It is now imperative that all customers comply with the nationwide rule to ensure a smoother and simpler transition through the airport.” EasyJet has issued advice to passengers who are flying from the airport. The airline says: “We recommend arriving at the airport 3 hours or at least 2 hours before your flight to account for potential delays and facilitate check-in.”