At Hanover Airport: queues, but no chaos

The autumn holidays are approaching - a correspondingly large crowd was expected at Hanover Airport.

In fact, queues formed again from time to time on Saturday.

The bottom line is that the clearance went better than before, according to the federal police.

Langenhagen - At the start of the autumn holiday, there were again long queues at Hanover Airport on Saturday morning.

A spokesman for the federal police said, however, that the clearance was "much more relaxed than in the past few weeks".

The commissioned company had around 40 additional workers on duty at the security checks.

Nevertheless, at times travelers reported waiting times of several hours.

In the past few weeks there had already been queues in Hanover, as was the case recently at the capital city airport BER.

Some passengers even missed flights as a result.

According to the Federal Police in Langenhagen, the main reason was personnel shortages at the commissioned company Securitas.

On Saturday, many travelers had obviously prepared themselves for longer waiting times and had arrived earlier.

In view of the expected rush at the beginning of the autumn holidays in Lower Saxony and Bremen, the airport and the federal police advised to plan more time.

The airport expected around 15,000 travelers this Saturday.

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Lots of passengers at the airport: failures cause displeasure

Finally soak up the sun: Many northern Germans use the beginning of the autumn holidays for a flight to the south.

It will be correspondingly full at the airport in the coming days - more full than ever since the beginning of Corona.

A spokeswoman has a tip for the travelers.

Lots of passengers at the airport: failures cause displeasure

Some travelers in the terminal reacted with incomprehension: "I actually find it unbearable that you have to wait so long - once here at the gate, but also during the security check," said Ludger Haferkemper from Höxter in East Westphalia before his departure to Rhodes early Saturday morning.

Three hours of waiting time should be planned in any case.

Other travelers like Anna Schade, who wanted to fly to Crete with her family from Braunschweig, emphasized the efforts of the airport.

The staff tried very hard to channel the queues.

The airport and the federal police had indicated that travelers could do their part to speed things up. "Some people have things in their luggage that don't belong there," said a federal police officer. “That then delays the controls further.” Passengers are therefore addressed at check-in. In addition, there are more pre-checks of luggage. The federal police said they had more staff on Saturday. The federal police want to give an exact balance of how the first autumn vacation weekend went on Monday.

Hanover Airport referred on Saturday to a statement by the industry association ADV. It said that the airports and the service companies were in a special situation. "After months of almost complete standstill of air traffic due to the corona pandemic, the significantly increasing passenger numbers at the beginning of the holiday season lead at times to capacity bottlenecks at individual locations," said ADV CEO Ralph Beisel. Among other things, the pandemic-related obligations to provide evidence slowed down the processes, and short-time work ensures staff shortages.

There was also heavy traffic on the trunk roads in Lower Saxony.

However, there were no major traffic jams until Saturday lunchtime, said a spokesman for the traffic management center in Hanover.

At times, traffic jammed on the A7 between Hanover and Hamburg and on the A1 between Bremen and Hamburg for several kilometers.

dpa