Hundreds of departing passengers at Queenstown Airport had to be re-screened yesterday morning, following a “security breach”.
Airport sustainability and corporate affairs GM Sara Irvine says a non-screened passenger made their way into the domestic departures lounge.
The errant passenger was detected within about a minute of entering the lounge, but it meant “the entire departures lounge then had to be re-screened” by Avsec.
One Air New Zealand passenger says she was on her Auckland-bound plane — scheduled to depart about 10.35am — when an in-flight announcement alerted them to the incident.
The passengers were asked to disembark, and take everything with them, to be re-screened.
“They split us up into our different planes — our plane was going as a priority — and they opened up as many screening lanes as they could,” the woman says.
Irvine says Aviation Security ran all four screening lanes to clear the backlog, during the busiest time of day, and deferred international passenger screening while that happened.
It’s understood at least five outbound domestic flights were affected.
In a statement, the airport said its staff worked with airlines and Avsec to get flights under way as quickly as possible.
“We are grateful for the co-operation of passengers and sorry for the inconvenience and stress this caused.”
The passenger says while there were “a couple of grumpy people” initially — “once you realised it was a security breach, everyone was fine” — her flight landed in Auckland about an hour later than scheduled.
