He added that there was a 10-minute window of technical difficulties at Terminal 3 in Melbourne, which mainly affected Virgin Australia, but the problem was quickly resolved and the lines began to move again.
There were long queues to check in Virgin Australia flights to Melbourne Airport on Friday morning, with several routes canceled or delayed.
“It’s definitely been a busy time,” a Sydney airport spokesman told AFR Weekend. “Friday was one of our busiest days since COVID. However, most of the queues were resolved around 10am and we didn’t see any major side effects on operations. The flights were leaving on time.” .
Sydney Airport has had an additional 50 customer service staff to help passengers prioritize flights.
It was always expected to be busy this weekend, causing possible bottlenecks at a time when airlines and airports are still struggling to find enough staff, like many other industries.
Over the past week, the online booking site KAYAK has seen a 258% increase in “last minute” domestic flight searches during the Queen’s Birthday weekend, compared to the week of May 23-29.
The most sought after national destinations in order were Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Coolangatta and Perth.
Chilly Melbourne was one of the most sought after national destinations for the Queen’s long birthday weekend. Joe Armao
Industry leaders agreed that while the Queen’s birthday weekend began with a lot of work, it was nothing like the Easter chaos when staff shortages, exacerbated by CoVID-19 isolation caused long queues at domestic airports.
NSW Prime Minister Dominic Perrottet attributed the airport’s queues to labor shortages, saying they were experiencing “across the country”.
Perrottet said he would raise the issue with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese when the couple meet in Canberra next week. “I will definitely increase the labor shortage in this country because they have to be addressed,” he told reporters in Sydney.
“They can’t necessarily be addressed at the state level, they need to be led at the national level, and that’s what we’re going to raise next week.”
With AAP