Holidaymakers are facing yet more misery at Manchester Airport as passengers have been spotted queuing in the car park.
Grim images from the scene show passengers lined up in the underground car park outside Terminal 1 on Tuesday morning.
Once inside, queues continued to snake around check-in and baggage enquires desks.
It comes as Brits have been warned to brace for a summer of airport chaos.
Airlines have been hit with staffing shortages at the same time operators are struggling to find recruits, get through red tape and cover Covid-19 absences, The Times reports.
One industry figure told the paper: "The process is cripplingly slow, Aviation was one of the hardest-hit sectors during the pandemic, suffered from a lack of targeted support, and is now facing a summer disrupted by the government being slow in vetting staff."
Officials have also blasted ministers over not providing resources to help get tens of thousands of potential employees through security clearance - including 12,000 at Heathrow alone.
It normally takes between 14 and 15 weeks to screen new staff, but it is understood to now be taking up to six months.
Lucy Moreton, General Secretary of the Immigration Services Union (ISU), told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: "Border Force isn’t immune to this.
"There have been staffing problems within Border Force for some time. And for the first time in living memory, the Border Force is no longer attracting enough candidates to fill the vacancies that they’ve got.
"Combined with the fact it takes nearly a year to fully train a Border Force officer, going into not just this summer, this weekend, catastrophically understaffed, with people beginning to travel again, and of course, those that went out earlier this week will be coming back by the middle of next week, the school holidays have finished.
"We do anticipate that the queues will move from security-based queues going outward to Border Force queues coming back in."
Speaking about Border Force having to move staff around to manage demand, she said: "To a certain extent it also depends on things we can’t control – for example, small boat migration. We can’t roster people for that.
"That actually draws a lot of resources and staff in the southeast so we can process people, particularly when we have a high number of arrivals.
"So we now have the situation where staff from ports and airports and in the southeast are now going to Dover to support staff there, but then staff from Scotland and Northern Ireland are being brought down to cover airports like Heathrow."
The problems at Manchester Airport are set to continue for some time, with Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham warning queues could continue for two months - just a day after the airport's managing director Karen Smart quit the company to return to the South of England.
The airport has previously said: "As we continue to recover from the pandemic and passenger numbers grow, security queues may be longer than usual at times.
"If you're due to travel in the next few weeks, please arrive at the earliest time your airline allows. We apologise to our customers for the disruption".
The Mirror has contacted Manchester Airport for comment.
Travellers have also complained of a long check-in line at Birmingham airport, while at Stansted arrivals have shared pictures of a 'full' queue of people at Passport Control.
A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “There are absolutely no delays to security vetting of applicants. It is wrong to suggest otherwise and we are prioritising vetting applications from the aviation industry.
"It is for the aviation industry to manage resourcing at airports and staff absences, especially at busy times of the year."
