“Give us patience”: Chaos continues at Sydney Airport
Aussies hoping to fly from Sydney airport over the Easter holidays are facing ongoing chaos, as long queues build up inside the airport’s domestic terminal.
It’s seen some passengers have been waiting for upwards of two hours to get through security, due to the start of the school holidays and staff shortages, which Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has attributed to Covid.
“At the moment the sick leave, absenteeism is twice the level of the reserves,” Mr Joyce told the Today show.
“You have 15 percent of cabin crew typically on reserve or backup to stand by, where now you’re getting up to 30 percent of people not turning up because Covid or (from being) close contacts.
“Managing that, we ask people to give us patience. We again apologise for it.”
The third day of delays has seen queues forming before 5am, with images from inside the packed terminal quickly circulating on social media.
Hell is… this at 5am.
🤦🏻 @SydneyAirport @JetstarAirways pic.twitter.com/Gq8VaKD5Az
— Dr Darren Saunders (@whereisdaz) April 8, 2022
It comes less than a week after Mr Joyce came under fire for appearing to blame customers for contributing to the delays.
“I went through the airport on Wednesday and people forget they need to take out their laptops and they need to take out their aerosols,” he said previously.
“So that is taking longer to get through the queue.”
Going forward, Mr Joyce said changes to the rules for close contacts - which has seen the rules for isolation become more varied depending on a person’s risk of getting sick - would also help the situation.
Image: Twitter