Birmingham airport ranked for it's endless long queues - Here's how it ranks among other airports

A recent study has ranked 12 airports based on the length of traffic jams and queue times, with a higher score indicating a longer wait.

This comes after passengers shared images of long queues outside the airport on social media.

Birmingham Airport came second in the ranking with a score of 54.9 out of 100.

The airport handles 11.48 million passengers and 2.64 million cars annually, leading to longer queues both inside and outside the airport. Last year, passengers waited an average of 24 minutes to pass through security at Birmingham Airport, a figure that could increase this summer due to new scanning equipment and renovations.

The data for the study was collected by compensation experts at claims.co.uk, who combined local authority traffic data, annual terminal passenger data, and security queue times to rank the efficiency of Britain’s airports. The study is timely, as British airports have recently experienced delays due to changes in luggage liquid limits, power cuts, new technology, and the summer holiday rush.

London Heathrow topped the list with a score of 78.3 out of 100, largely due to the delays caused by the 79.15 million passengers that travel through the airport each year. Bristol came third with a score of 54.7, with passengers waiting an average of 30 minutes to pass through security. Despite having only 3.99 million passengers annually, Leeds Bradford Airport ranked fourth with a score of 51.4, due to its average security wait time of 35 minutes, the longest in the UK.

Manchester Airport, the third busiest in the UK with 28.08 million passengers per year, rounded out the top five with a score of 50.5. Both Manchester and Birmingham airports have an average security queue time of 24 minutes.

A spokesperson from claims.co.uk advised passengers to balance their arrival times to avoid wasting hours in line.

They suggested that passengers should aim to arrive at the airport three hours before their flight, especially if they are travelling via one of the top-ranked airports. They also recommended checking local news and social media for updates on airport queues on the day of the flight and following the airline’s advice.

The study used data from the Department for Transport’s Road Traffic Statistics Report (2023), the UK Civil Aviation Authority’s Annual Airport Data (2023), and the Which? 2022 Security Queue Report to calculate each airport’s index score out of 100, which formed the basis of the final ranking.