A passport to frustration for air passengers
DID you face a queue like this for passport checks the last time you travelled through Manchester Airport?
If you did, you weren’t alone this August.
According to Manchester Airport, ‘many passengers have faced lengthy queues’ due to insufficient resources from the Home Office, which runs immigration.
However, the Home Office has blamed the busy peak summer season at Manchester – and says that generic problems across airports include lots of planes arriving at the same time, late-night arrivals and capacity issues at terminals.
The Home Office’s agreed service standards are to clear UK and EU passengers within 25 minutes and non-EU passengers within 45 minutes, 95 per cent of the time.
The Home Office were asked how many times it missed these targets in August.
A spokesman said ‘we do not publish this data’.
But passengers like Simon Carson, a UK passport holder, say they have waited much longer.
Simon, who runs a business buying and selling rare stamps, said he spent 45 minutes queuing at passport control at around 1pm on August 19, after travelling from Prague into Terminal 3.
He said: “I was furious. My time is incredibly valuable.
“I’d come from Prague, where I was straight through. Then I get to Manchester and it’s shocking.
“The airport needs to have all things that are meant to be operational operating – and one of the electric doors after luggage collection were broken.
“At the peak of summer, that shouldn’t happen. Nor should the queues.”
Simon, who said one of the e-gates run by Border Force was also out of order, is not alone.
Peter Woolland visits each terminal twice a day in his job as a transfer driver for passengers going to and from the Wirral.
He said: “I now don’t leave the Wirral until I know passengers are off the plane because it invariably takes an hour for them to get through passport control.
“Families take even longer because children can’t use the e-gates.”
Andrew James said that on Bank Holiday Monday: “Landed in @manairport to the mother of all passport queues. It’s almost as if they’re not expecting people to land.
“Can’t ever remember having a good experience.”
Travelling through Terminal 1 on August 15, Michael O’Connachtáin posted on Twitter: “Approaching 30 minute wait in ‘fast track’ queue at passport control at Manchester Airport.”
And posting a picture of a long queue on August 7, Johnny Morris added: “T3 arrivals passport control queue. Absolute JOKE. Sort it out Manchester Airport. Queued up longer than my flight.”
In a background statement, the Home Office said every effort was made to keep delays at the border to a minimum – but that it also had a duty to maintain security by checking all passengers. It said delays at airports across the UK could be caused by late flights, a number of flights arriving at the same time, and ‘arrival hall capacity’ interrupting the flow of arrivals.
August was the peak of the holiday season and the bank holiday weekend was the busiest at Manchester Airport so far this year, it said.
A spokesman added: “The vast majority of people who arrive at Manchester Airport get through the border within our service standards.
“But we understand the frustration for those who have experienced longer waits and remain fully committed to working with our partners to reduce waiting times as far as is possible. At the same time, we will not compromise the essential checks we carry out at the border which keep our country safe.”
Border Force says it has taken steps to improve customer journeys including ‘proactive planning’ and ‘passenger-facing communication tools’.
A Manchester Airport spokesman said: “We are aware that at various points during the summer, many of our passengers have faced lengthy queues getting through immigration. This is not the welcome we want for passengers arriving into the UK through Manchester Airport. We urge the government to commit to a long-term plan that ensures Border Force resources match the growth in passenger numbers through the airport.”
The airport said there are no capacity issues at Manchester Airport and the problem lies in having ‘Border Force resources in the right places at the right times’.
The ongoing £1bn airport expansion would develop terminals that are ‘entirely fit for purpose and reflect present day circumstances’.