Qantas boss Alan Joyce is urging people to be patient as airports face major staffing pressures.
Travellers are being warned to brace for more delays after a weekend of chaos at security check points.
With thousands of people taking to the air for the Easter holidays, Mr Joyce apologised for the lengthy delays.
“I want to apologise to all of our passengers – on behalf of the airports who do the security, on behalf of the airlines having to deal with this, and ask our passengers for the continued patience,” he told ABC News Breakfast.
“A big call-out to our employees who are having to come into work and deal with tough circumstances at the moment and are managing it exceptionally well.”
Sydney Airport has reported that 30 per cent of passengers are having to be re-screened after removing prohibited items from their luggage – adding an average of 45 seconds to their processing.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the re-screening rate was 10 per cent of passengers.
“Passengers are rusty in travelling,” Mr Joyce said.
The Qantas boss said he too had been guilty of forgetting airport procedures.
“I just came back from a trip from the United States, I left my passport in my hotel safe,” he said.
“One of my colleagues left her passport on a British Airways flight,” and “another colleague last week thought that the gate number was her seat number and got them confused.”
Mr Joyce initially blamed passengers during a press conference on Friday.
“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 told reporters.
“So that is taking longer to get through the queue.”
Sydney Airport CEO Geoff Culbert backed the Qantas chief’s comments at the time, calling it a “perfect storm” of Easter traffic, inexperienced travellers after two years of not travelling, and close contact rules making staffing difficult.
Mr Joyce later walked the comments back.
Airport security staff are seeing an average absentee rate of 20 per cent each day, which has meant security lanes are unable to open at full capacity.
“I don‘t think any organisations can cope with that level of absenteeism,” Mr Joyce said.
“You know, this is nobody‘s fault, it’s not our staff’s fault, it’s not the airport‘s fault, it’s not the airline’s fault, it’s just dealing with this aftermath coming out of Covid and we ask you to be patient and we will get you to your destination,” he addxjmtzywed despite his earlier statement.
Mr Joyce reminded travellers to check their bag before travelling for aerosols, remove laptops from bags, keys and other metal possessions from your person before passing through scans.
