Isle of Man visitor’s ‘fantastic’ trip spoilt by airport security
A VISITOR from the Isle of Man said his fantastic holiday to Guernsey was sadly spoilt by poor service in airport security on his way back home.
Darren Lillie contacted the Guernsey Press saying it was unfortunately not a good end to an otherwise great break.
‘The main luggage check-in scanner is broken (allegedly since Monday, although the pilot of our outbound plane reported this as the cause of a delay on Thursday) so passengers are asked to carry their luggage to departures via security,’ he explained.
He was then called back for a random bag search with everything being removed from the case. While he understood the need for added security, he found the manner in which this was conducted in the security hall, with another passenger also having a random search behind a flimsy screen, ‘totally humiliating’.
‘These checks should be conducted in a separate room away from other passengers,’ he said.
‘The bags are then loaded onto a trolley to be moved by ground staff who also then have to be escorted by G4S to unload the trolley into a waiting truck.
‘Not a good end to an otherwise great break away – such a shame.’
He hoped the head of security that he spoke to rectifies this issue for future passengers.
A spokesman for Guernsey Ports said that over the weekend, Guernsey Airport instigated its contingency plan for the processing of departing hold baggage following a number of intermittent faults with its hold baggage screening equipment.
The faults required the intervention of a specialist service engineer who was unable to travel to Guernsey until early this week to do the repairs.
Contingency plans were initiated at short notice by a joint team of airport employees, G4S security officers and Aurigny ground and passenger services employees.
‘The team worked tirelessly across the weekend to ensure that there was minimal disruption to passengers,’ the spokesman said.
‘Contingency plans are there for when things go wrong, but they can mean we’re not able to provide the usual level of service that we and our passengers would expect.
‘We wish to apologise to this passenger and we will take on board their feedback as we look to improve our contingency plans going forward.’
In June 2020, Guernsey Airport was given approval to commence a £12m. project to overhaul the hold baggage screening system, which involves the procurement of two new X-ray scanning machines, conveyor belt, carousel and the construction of a building to the west of the terminal building in order to accommodate the new system.
Enabling works for the project are due to begin soon.
