North Rhine-second Westphalia’s summer holiday weekend is quickly coming, and airport lines can be lengthy. According to an RTL reporter at Düsseldorf Airport, “we received reports of a queue that is around three kilometers long” from Cologne/Bonn Airport. Before you may go through the security check, you must wait for three and a half hours.
Uli Klose, a reporter for RTL, reports that “a few hundred tourists are stranded there right now” and shows pictures of a long wait in the terminal at Cologne/Bonn Airport. “I’ve already moved forward by 100 meters. From the front of the waiting crowd, Austrian journalist Robert Misik tweeted, “Only about 1000 meters queue to the security check.
Prior to the start of the summer vacations, the airport issued a warning on its website about lengthy wait times during security checks. At least 2.5 hours before departure, passengers should be at the airport. Nobody anticipated such large lines a week and a half ago.
However, there were indications, claims zay Tarim, Verdi’s union secretary, in an interview with RTL. The current sick leave rate at the security checkpoints at the Cologne/Bonn Airport is 24 percent. Employees here claim that they are at their breaking point and can no longer handle it. There are workforce shortages as a result of hundreds of workers reporting sick.
Airlines continue to cancel multiple flights out of Cologne/Bonn in addition to the security check line backups, most likely also because of a staffing shortage. (using dpa)