Passenger queue stretches outside airport

The airport said the outdoor queues were to ease congestion around construction works

Long queues have formed outside Birmingham Airport with some people reporting having to wait several hours.

Passengers posted photos of extensive queues snaking outside the building on Friday morning. One person on social media said the delay had caused his family to miss their flight.

Large queues have been reported at the airport in recent weeks as building works are carried out, with many passengers saying they had lost hundreds of pounds due to missing flights.

On Friday, an airport spokesperson said the decision to have passengers queue outside was due to it being a sunny day and to ease congestion around the construction works for the new security search area.

The spokesperson said: "Whilst this looks unusual to our customers, and for this we apologise, we do make operational decisions daily to ensure the flow of customers through security."

Christopher Craske said and his family missed their flight due to the "absolute chaos" at the airport, despite getting there two and a half hours early.

"No one cares it's disgusting. Boys are absolutely gutted," Mr Craske said on X.

He told people to "avoid Birmingham airport this summer".

Nikki Tucker said the queue was more than an hour and a half long with a fast pass.

"Staff aren’t visible until you have queued outside for an eternity then the express lane is mixed," she said.

Aimee Francisco said she was queuing for security for approximately two hours and that there were people at security just ahead of them whose flights were due to leave 10 minutes later.

Molly Blakemore, who arrived at Birmingham Airport from Amsterdam at about 07:30 BST said she could not believe the amount of people queuing outside.

"I was really shocked at the amount of people - there were hardly any people in the inside check-in area, it was all queues outside.

"Even the taxi driver said he couldn't believe how big the queues were."

She told the BBC that people leaving the airport could not go out through the normal exit as it was reserved for the queues coming into the airport.

The construction works are for a new "simpler and streamlined" security search area.

The airport has been undergoing the improvements for more than a year, with the multimillion-pound upgrades nearing completion.

Earlier in May the BBC was told Birmingham Airport needed at least 100 more security agents with the number of vacant positions meaning security staff felt overstretched, making it harder to recruit and retain staff.