Melbourne Airport chaos after a security incident

The security line for Qantas domestic flights at Melbourne Airport was paused at 05:30 this morning following a security breach.

3AW listener Deb, who was at the airport on Wednesday morning, spoke of ‘chaos’.

“The queue is out the door in the terminal, something is wrong with security I suspect, but the queue is absolute madness,” she said.

“They call people when the flights come in, the line is huge, people are just waiting to get on, it’s absolute chaos.”

Qantas has since stated that the security incident has been dealt with and normal operations should now be back to normal.

CEO Alan Joyce said security officers had responded to a minor security breach after a passenger entered the wrong gate.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said security guards had to ensure a passenger did not cause a significant security breach after entering the wrong gate

“It is my understanding that a passenger accidentally went through the wrong gate, turned around and then there was a 15 minute delay as security officers assessed exactly what the passenger was doing to ensure there was no significant security breach.” said Mr Joyce.

“If it was, we should have evacuated the whole terminal, but we didn’t have to, we could pause everything for 15 minutes until those CCTV cameras were reviewed and we could get back in and check in.

“What happens after these incidents is that people at the airport, ourselves and security services, will look to see if there are ways to stop this, but this was relatively minor compared to breaches we said in the past.”

A passenger queuing in the long line took a video panning over the terminal.

Dozens of people wait to go through security, with one woman looking anxiously at her phone as she stands in line.

More to come.