Düsseldorf/Cologne (dpa/lnw) – The passengers had to be patient at the start of the holiday season in NRW on Saturday, especially at Düsseldorf Airport. According to the airport, longer queues formed at the security checks in the departure area at peak times in the morning and mid-morning. The waiting times were between 10 and 60 minutes, but according to a spokesman it was far from being comparable to the sometimes chaotic conditions at the beginning of the summer holidays.
From Friday to Monday, the day of German unity, the largest NRW airport is expecting a total of 268,000 passengers (departures/arrivals combined). Düsseldorf is expecting a total of 1.1 million passengers for the two weeks of autumn vacation, which corresponds to an average of 64,000 per vacation day. The Verdi union, which observed the start of the holiday season in Düsseldorf, criticized the fact that far too few security personnel were still available. There were queues of several hundred meters in rows of five in front of Pier C. “You had to top it up after the summer and nothing happened. It’s a disaster,” said spokesman Özay Tarim. According to the airport in Cologne/Bonn, it was “normal operation” with waiting times at the security check in the morning the five minutes.
