Priority security (MUC) clearance suspended?
 

Yesterday my husband and I flew from MUC to YYZ, barely. We arrived at the airport nearly 3 hrs before our flight. The week before, we'd flown from MUC to Hannover. There was a longish line for security in T2 that day and we couldn't find the line for Business/Star Alliance Gold, so checking in for the Toronto flight I made sure to ask our check-in person where it was. She replied that it's always changing, but we should ask the security guards. We did, and they told us (words to the effect of): "We have many passengers, so only First Class passengers have a dedicated line: Business and Star Alliance join the Economy line."

So we did. It took us nearly 2 hrs to make our way through the line that snaked upstairs, downstairs, and throughout the departure area. We made the flight by 5 min. It was very stressful, with people trying to cut in front of us whose flights were later than ours.

We've travelled to Europe many times, most often through Munich airport. I've told many people it's well-organized and relaxing (as much as an airport can be). But my opinion has now changed. I'm asking fellow Flyer Talk members: is it common for the Priority Security Clearance to be suspended without warning at European airports in busy times such as Munich's Oktoberfest? Should this be added to the many factors one should consider in choosing a gateway destination for Europe? (I would note we were not Oktoberfest-bound but had to travel there at that time for a conference.)

Tiny silver lining: our bags were the first out at Pearson. It occurred to me that maybe someone was monitoring our (lack of) progress in the security line and got our bags ready to be offloaded in the likely case we didn't make the flight.

Since this is a MUC airport issue rather than an Air Canada issue, I'm moving this thread to the Germany forum.

Adam Smith
AC Forum Moderator

OK, you moved the post as you saw fit. But I wonder, should Air Canada warn customers they need to get to Munich airport 4+ hours before their flights in order to get through security without missing flights? Can Business travellers/Star Alliance Gold card holders count on priority security service?

From my experience MUC is usually well organized and the priority line for security is advertised via signs.

At the times of Octoberfest (6 Million visitors!!!), as for any other mega event worldwide, extra waiting time at airport security is to be expected. To have no priority line though is unusual, I have never seen that for my travels.

Some security lanes are being renovated which is leading to congestion and delays.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/luft...-business.html

You got the double whammy of Oktoberfest peak and a third of the lanes being under renovation to the new CT scanner system. The F lane on the extreme left will accept business and *G travelling economy though. ;)

I went through in mid-September, at a point where there really wasn't much else going on in the city. In the middle of July, my previous visit, I'd sailed through security in minutes. September was chaos - there were nominally priority lines, but you just couldn't get to them without joining the general queue first which was very quickly snaking round a number of tensa-barriers and nearly out of the terminal. Even when you got through the first automated gate you were thrown back into the general queue. Eventually I got to the point where the queue again split into normal and priority lanes - after in excess of 40 minutes - and was through quickly because that routed me into the new scanners (not that this was policed - I was just decisive as soon as I could be). If there was a F channel available to *G, it wasn't very well advertised. All that was on offer was some sort of expedited lane for close-in departures, although that was but a handful of flights. Once you were in the queue and stuck, even if your flight had subsequently appeared on the expedited list, there appeared to be no policy that enabled the queue guardians to pull people out and re-route them. Organisation was far from what I've come to expect at MUC.

Fortunately, in spite of Deutsche Bahn's best efforts, I'd arrived a little earlier than I normally would - about 1h50 before my flight - so I did make it in spite of a fairly late gate change from the main building to the remote one involving a train ride. There were a lot of very stressed people though, some of whom would certainly not have been as fortunate. I've mentally elevated it to a "arrive 30-45 minutes earlier" departure point for the moment.

The security guards said the First lane would only accept people flying First Class. We heard them say it to others, too. Since we only made our flight by five minutes, if we'd tried the First lane and been turned away, we likely would have missed our flight.

German media reported a 2km (1¼ mi) queue to access security control today, starting outside the terminal building. That's a one hour wait, plus 25 minutes for actual security control.

Has anyone any idea on when things will get back to normal
have the airport indicate a time frame for the construction?

Oktoberfest is over. So it should be better now. Next school holidays will start 28.10.2024 and end3.11.2024. On this weekends there could be more traffic.

Construction should be finished soon. Goal is to be done in fall 2024.