More than 400,000 people expected to pass through Birmingham Airport over the Easter fortnight

Large queues have been seen at the likes of Manchester Airport where passengers queued for up to 90 minutes due to staff shortages hitting the industry.

But at Birmingham things have reportedly been moving steadily – with the average waiting time being between 15 and 20 minutes – compared to other airports.

Bosses are expecting an average of around 28,000 customers a day over the Easter holidays with popular destinations including Dublin, Amsterdam, Dubai, Malaga and Tenerife.

Al Titterington, terminal operations director for Birmingham Airport, said: "We’re looking forward to welcoming more than 400,000 customers over the Easter fortnight.

"We ask customers to arrive at the airport to check in, or drop off baggage, at the time your airline advises. Customer can ‘help us help you’ to keep queues moving by presenting compliant hand luggage - removing all liquids, gels, pastes and electrical items – at the security x-ray scanners."

It comes as Luton-based airline easyJet, which has a major presence at Birmingham Airport, said summer flight bookings were exceeding pre-pandemic levels – with more bookings made during the past six weeks than in the same period in 2019.

easyJet said the UK's removal of its coronavirus travel restrictions on January 24 sparked a "strong and sustained recovery" resulting in the proportion of bookings between the UK and the European Union being "broadly equal".

This is compared with a 70:30 split in favour of the EU last year when the UK imposed stricter conditions on travellers. The low-cost carrier operated at 80 per cent of 2019 capacity in the first three months of 2022.

Chief executive Johan Lundgren said: "EasyJet's performance in the second quarter has been driven by improved trading following the UK Government's decision to relax testing restrictions with an extra boost from self-help measures which saw us outperform market expectations.

"Since travel restrictions were removed, easyJet has seen a strong recovery in trading which has been sustained, resulting in a positive outlook for Easter and beyond, with daily booking volumes for summer currently tracking ahead of those at the same time in FY19.

"We remain confident in our plans which will see us reaching near 2019 flying levels for this summer and emerge as one of the winners in the recovery."

EasyJet said it has flown 94 per cent of its planned schedule in the last seven days, with around 1,500 daily flights. This is despite "the recent increase in the number of crew testing positive for Covid-19, together with normal operational disruption such as weather and ATC (air traffic control) delays", the airline explained.

Meanwhile over Easter, Birmingham Airport is deploying staff in support roles to provide extra help to customers including reminders on making sure hand luggage is compliant – before they go into the security check zone.

Around 43 per cent of the airport's employees were made redundant due to travel restrictions imposed during Covid-19, with a recruitment drive occurring in November last year with the aim of increasing a number of key roles including security officers.

And training is now ongoing for the newly-recruited officers who will be on duty "soon" to assist with the security, chiefs have confirmed.