00:00Birmingham airport serves millions of passengers each year, but operational challenges in recent
00:06months have raised questions about its reliability. From long queues to staffing shortages, some
00:13travellers have reported frustrations.
00:16To understand the impact, we asked people about their experiences of flying from Birmingham
00:21and whether they've considered alternatives. Here's what they had to say.
00:25I have a lot of thoughts about this. I live near the airport, so it's my local airport.
00:29I travel out of Birmingham at least once a year. I hate it. As an airport experience
00:34it's terrible. They were doing work on the security I think last year and there were
00:38queues out the door. Having gone to Heathrow for my last holiday, which is the first time
00:43I've been to Heathrow in about eight years, it was so slick. Bear in mind it's a much
00:48bigger airport. I got there so much earlier because I thought everything would be busy
00:51and it was so much slicker. So my preference would be Heathrow or Manchester, which isn't
00:56much further for me.
00:57If you get early in the morning, the escalator is closed and they say because there's too
01:03much volume of people. That's when you probably need the escalators to go down. Yes, and I
01:11know they've got building works going. We saw my daughter off recently, but she went
01:18through okay, no problem. But there was a lot of people waiting outside and that's
01:22because of the work going on. But we do like going from Manchester. We've been from Manchester
01:27all the time. You always find it easier to go from Manchester.
01:31So my preference is Birmingham because it's really close. I haven't flown anywhere since
01:38the summer, but we were aware there was going to be queues, so we just went early.
01:46When I've used it, it was good, but that was before the more recent issues with the crazy
01:50queues that I saw and people, some of my friends told me about. So I don't know what
01:53it's like now. I suppose it's easier to find your way around than Heathrow.
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