Man's 'horrendous' experience at Leeds Bradford Airport with long queues, delayed flights and 'dumped' suitcases

Harry Pickard, 25, visited the airport on Sunday, May 29 in order to board a flight to Alicante.

Mr Pickard, from Scarborough, said he the queues for security were snaking around the building and that he had to leave his suitcase by the conveyor belt instead of going through the usual check-in process.

He was in the queue for several hours but thankfully a member of staff collected people who were due to be on his flight, taking them to the front of the queue.

Mr Pickard said: "The queue was from security like all away around the airport and then it was zigzagging all the way to check in and then all the way outside, right round the full building.

"We had to queue outside and people were coming down the queue and calling us for our flight. We didn't have time for a drink or anything.

"Staff just kept coming down the queue to ask like 'is anyone on a Jet2 flight to Ibiza? please follow me'. It's all the staff were doing.

"We had to push in front of everyone to go to security and then straight on the flight.

"Everyone was stressed, all of the families. It was just horrendous."

He added: "When we were checking in our cases we had to do it ourselves and dump them by the conveyor belt and leave them in the middle of the room.

"They said literally dump your case there and we're going to go through them and put them on the correct flight,

"So we were like, oh my god, like what if our cases don't go?

"We were flying at 5.30pm but we didn't take off until 7.40pm so we didn't arrive until after midnight local time. Chaos."

British travellers have been gripped by three-hour-long queues at airports up and down the country.

The long security queues have caused chaos for customers as well as staff working at airports in Manchester and Yorkshire’s biggest airport Leeds Bradford (LBA).

A spokesperson for LBA said: “LBA apologises to all customers impacted by current queuing issues.

“Unfortunately, these current challenges are an industry-wide problem, caused by the speed of withdrawal of travel restrictions and testing which has led to the rapid recovery of international travel.

“Airports across the country are being impacted by lead times to recruit and train additional staff.”

However, LBA has reassured customers that they have recruited more staff and are currently waiting on a response from the Home Office.

“All staff required for the airport to operate at full capacity have now been recruited, however, we are still awaiting full Home Office approval across all positions, following extensive referencing and accreditation checks.

“More staff are being released into operation from training each week.

“LBA is confident that with additional staff being recruited the situation will return to normal.

“We also have additional career opportunities at our airport and encourage anyone looking for work to apply via our website.”