Belfast airport security dubbed an ‘absolute joke’ by passengers stranded in huge queues

Waiting times of 40 minutes or more exasperated passengers this morning

Belfast airport has been slammed for long wait times (Wikimedia/ardfern)

Passengers attempting to fly from Belfast International Airport this morning were met by huge queues that extended outside the terminal.

Lengthy waiting times were experienced by travellers, with Kelley McBride telling Belfast Live she had arrived at 7am but 40 minutes later had still not gone through security.

She said the delay was an “absolute joke” in a social media post.

Other flyers took pictures of the queues that snaked out of the airport door.

“Belfast international is the biggest joke of an airport I’ve ever seen,” tweeted Sean McMullan. “Line for security starts outside the building.”

Gerd​ Curley also tweeted a picture of the line, writing: “If you ever need a reason not to use Belfast Airport!

“This is on a freezing, ice cold morning in March, young and elderly queued outside the doors, and their excuse, ‘we’re expanding the security lanes from 6 to 8’.

“No wonder most people are using Dublin Airport #joke.”

Paul Fitzpatrick was concerned the queue would make him miss his easyJet flight. He tweeted: “Was here in plenty of time but not even in the airport yet. How will I make my 8.15 flight?”

The airport has been criticised in the past for security waiting times and vowed last month to add an additional two lanes.

However, while implementing this, the airport has had to reduce capacity from six lanes to five until the middle of March.

“We are currently expanding the size of our security search area to include eight search lanes, however, to do this we have had to reduce the security lanes from six to five and also reduced the queueing space with the security search area,” said a spokesperson.

“All security lanes are open and fully manned.

“We understand this has caused some delays and continue to advise passengers to arrive two hours prior departure.”