Edinburgh Airport labels Which? survey on security waiting times 'flawed' - after being ranked fifth-worst out of seven

Edinburgh Airport has defended itself against a survey labelling it the fifth-worst large airport in the UK for security wait times, out of a list of just seven.
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The Which? Survey ranks Edinburgh at number five in a list of seven airports, or at number seven in a list of 13 separate terminals.

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A spokesman for Edinburgh Airport called the survey’s methodology ‘flawed’.

Edinburgh Airport.Edinburgh Airport.
Edinburgh Airport.
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He said: “We’re open on our security performance and don’t believe it is helpful for passengers to compare us to others based on a flawed methodology.

“It’s based on the perception of a set of passengers. Ours is based on hard data from our security hall which drives the live tracker on our website.

“We’d be happy to share with Which? if they asked but they didn’t.”

The results from Which? Are based on a wider online survey which asked Which? Members about their experiences of flying to or from a UK airport in the last year.

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The section on security wait times asked 4,599 responders about their perceptions of how much time they had to wait in security queues.

The results divide ‘airports’ into terminals, either large - 10 million or more passengers a year - or small - fewer than 10 million passengers a year.

Customers travelling through the airport can expect an average wait time of 10.5 minutes, according to the Which? Survey.

But data from Edinburgh Airport based on times measured in the security hall between June 1 and September 30 2019 indicate that wait times are much shorter.

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The Edinburgh Airport data shows that 93% of passengers make it through security in under 10 minutes, and 68% of passengers are through in less than five minutes.

A spokesman for Which? responding to the Airport’s criticism said: “We use responses given by real passengers to provide an average estimated queue time for each airport.”

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