A man has slammed Bristol Airport after he queued for more than an hour just to check in for his flight. Adam Chambers was one of the passengers who experienced delays at the airport on Sunday, May 1, when long delays were caused by an IT failure with self-service check-ins.
The 35-year-old from Kingswood told Bristol Live that his experience at the airport was "organised chaos", and that it appeared to be understaffed. The airport has since apologised for the problems, but denied that it was understaffed on that day.
But Adam said: "There were people queue jumping there and all sorts because there were no staff there to enforce it. If it went on any longer then people would have probably started getting angry and obviously that's not a good place to be is it."
Read more: Bristol Airport: Passenger blasts lengthy check-in queues as 'an absolute joke'
Adam says that he queued up for an hour and 20 minutes at around 2am to check into his flight to Tenerife, while some other passengers queued for even longer. And he said that when he tried to get through security, only two lanes out of six were open which left "hundreds" of people funnelling through the checks.
"By the time I actually got through, checked in and through security, I only had 40 minutes if that before my flight. Bear in mind I always arrive at the airport three or four hours before, so it gives you an idea where we are," he said.
The problem was largely resolved by 6am with most airlines’ kiosks made operational and extra staff on hand to help customers, and all kiosks were fully operational by 7.40am according to Bristol Airport. The airport has been experiencing more delays today (May 4), and a spokesperson has said that "on some occasions staff shortages can impact on waiting times and service standards."
Adam says that he would like the airport to solve the problems as his experience was a "shambles". He said he wants it to "just make sure that you don't get a repeat of this really, make sure that they resource it better."
In a previous statement to Bristol Live , Richard Thomasson, head of customer operations, said: “We’re really sorry for the problems experienced by customers this morning, which were caused by an IT fault with our self-service check-in kiosks. We brought in extra staff to try and help as many customers as possible and worked with our airlines to minimise disruption.
"All our self-service kiosks are now working. This remains a busy time of year so we’re still advising customers to arrive at the terminal at least two hours before their departure time.”
