Qantas security breach causes delays and mayhem in Melbourne

A Qantas passenger doing the wrong thing at Melbourne Airport and faulty security equipment at Adelaide Airport have seen entire terminals evacuated.

Two Australian airports have been hit with security breaches in a chaotic morning for travellers.

The Qantas terminal at Melbourne Airport was evacuated and two fully boarded planes disembarked, after a passenger went through one-way security doors the wrong way, avoiding screening.

And Adelaide Airport was forced to clear its terminal after a faulty piece of security equipment failed to properly screen a number of passengers.

When they could not be located, the decision was made to evacuate the airside part of the terminal and re-screen all travellers.

The Melbourne Airport incident caused a number of flight delays early Tuesday morning.

All passengers at Melbourne Airport Terminal 1 are being forced to be re-screened on Tuesday morning.

A Qantas spokeswoman said a man passed from the land side part of the terminal to the air side without going through security screening early on Tuesday morning.The customer had arrived in Melbourne from Perth, where he had been screened on departure.

But instead of heading straight to his connecting flight, he walked out of the sterile area of the terminal and towards the baggage carousel.

The security breach caused extensive disruption to passengers at Melbourne Airport.

Qantas said he was there for less than a minute, and then walked back through the one-way security doors the wrong way, presumably after realising he did not need to collect his bags.

An alarm was triggered, and the doors briefly locked, but the man was able to get back into the sterile area.

Qantas was looking into why the doors did not lock as they were meant to.

Security guards were notified, and the incident reported within a few minutes, but the customer could not immediately be located through CCTV footage.

That prompted the decision to clear the airport terminal, disembark boarded aircraft and rescreen all passengers.

The man was eventually found and interviewed by Australian Federal Police, who were not laying charges.

As a result of the incident, a number of flights were delayed, including services to Brisbane and Sydney that had been boarded, ready for takeoff.

“Safety is our number one priority, but we know this disruption is causing some inconvenience for our passengers and we apologise for that,” the spokeswoman said.

“We are investigating how this incident occurred.”

The incident came just over a month after a security breach at Qantas’s Sydney Airport terminal.

In that instance, the unscreened passenger was not detected until a flight to Melbourne took off, resulting in everyone on board having to be escorted from the plane on landing to be rescreened.

The incidents came just as Qantas was lifting its performance in the wake of a nightmarish few months of flight delays, cancellations, mishandled bags and poor customer service.

In recent weeks, Qantas has reported vastly improved metrics and was confident of a relatively smooth Christmas holiday period.