An Edinburgh mum has hit out at after her family were left to wait outside for hours alongside hundreds of passengers on airport tarmac.
Gail Chalmers, 41, from Davidson Mains, had been enjoying a fantastic half-term holiday in Tenerife before returning home to Edinburgh with Jet2 in the early hours of Sunday morning. She says that her family, including her husband and two kids, were left standing on the tarmac before being able to get indoors to go through immigration.
Following this, they were then subjected to a wait of over an hour to get through passport control, having to navigate sick in the lobby and other irate travellers. Gail says that there was little information or support for young families and that the whole ordeal put an immense dampener on their holiday.
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They arrived at around 3am but were not able to get through border checks until after 5am. She added that there was no priority for those with babies and young children.
On their arrival at Edinburgh Airport, she said: “My husband and I with our two young children were just one of the families impacted by this. We'd enjoyed a lovely holiday in Tenerife for half-term before a nightmare arrival back in Edinburgh.
“It was utter bedlam, the police were called as people were understandably getting extremely frustrated. It was apparently caused by 14 flights being delayed and arriving all at the same time.
“This meant that there were severe delays as people could not get through the border control. Apparently there were only two border guards at the time that we landed and when we got through passport control at 5am there were four in total.
“I have some serious questions for Edinburgh Airport with their organisation and staffing. It's half-term, the volumes of people coming through on a given day are scheduled and planned. So what happens at the end of staff shifts?
“Are border and ground staff simply sent home at the end of shift knowing full well that there's 14 flight loads of people still to arrive. What are the contingency plans for something like this happening?
“Why are there not extra staff on call during school holidays and busy times? Why is there not a holding lounge before the passport control to at least allow people shelter from cold temperatures?
“Why is there no one accountable on the ground when this happens, trying to manage the situation? Also, where are the airlines in all of this?”
Gail says that Jet2 disembarked her family onto the tarmac where they stood for hours with hundreds of other passengers in the middle of the night. She questions why the airline would not allow them to stay on the plane and be sheltered.
The concerned mum also hit out at the lack of prioritisation for people with young families and says that she saw multiple people with young toddlers and babies standing in the queue. She added that there did not seem to be any member of staff who was responsible for managing the situation and that all the actors were blaming one another.
She continued: “There was no system for prioritising people who had waited longer. We saw flight loads of people coming from different directions cutting in front of those that had waited longer.
“There were no staff responsible for managing the situation and the airline blamed the airport, whilst airport staff were blaming immigration, and immigration were saying to take it up with the police.
“A police officer actually said to us 'if you book cheap flights, this is the risk you take?' - like it's our fault? Our flights were not even cheap.
“Someone was also sick in the passport arrivals area and it wasn't cleaned up - hundreds of people had to walk around it. Why is there no cleaning staff on duty?
“It's utterly embarrassing to be calling ourselves an International Airport when this is the welcome people are receiving on arrival into Edinburgh. I'm really embarrassed that this is my home city, and that we can't sort this out.
“I totally understand that mistakes can happen now and again, but we know this is a regular, recurring problem with Edinburgh as the exact same thing happened to us returning from Tenerife in half term last year.
“The welcome we received into Tenerife South airport was excellent and efficient, despite huge volumes going through there. So why can't we organise ourselves in a similar way?”
“An Edinburgh Airport spokesman said: "The late arrival of 16 flights due to adverse weather between midnight and 0330 on Sunday led to a large number of passengers arriving at Border Force in a short period of time.
“This is clearly not the experience we want passengers to have when arriving at the airport however these were exceptional circumstances.
“Staff were on-hand, along with colleagues from our partners, to manage queues and deal with passenger queries. We thank passengers for their patience and understanding.
“All parts of the airport terminal are regularly cleaned, as is standard practice, and where our teams are made aware of any specific issues of concern they respond quickly to deal with these.”
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