Sydney and Melbourne airport chaos as dozens of travelers told to expect huge queues and delays

Dozens of travelers at Sydney and Melbourne Airport have been warned to expect long queues, delays and cancellations just hours after an IT glitch.

Passengers were confronted with chaotic scenes at the airport on Monday morning with lines seen stretching all the way to the international terminal.

Queues also formed at the airport’s service desk after 20 domestic flights were canceled leaving travelers scrambling to book another flight.

Similar scenes unfolded at Sydney Airport where 21 domestic flights were scrapped across four airlines throwing the travel plans of hundreds into disarray.

Qantas, Virgin Australia, Jetstar and REX have canceled flights out of Sydney with some frustrated travelers receiving just a few hours notice.

Virgin Australia axed 10 flights, Qantas canceled eight, with two flights dropped by Virgin and Rex dumping one.

In Melbourne, Qantas dropped seven flights, five from Emirates and Virgin Australia, two from American Airlines and one from British Airways.

The canceled flights at both airports were between 6:30am and 7pm on Monday.

It’s understood the flights were canceled to and from Sydney due to operational reasons, including resourcing challenges and engineering requirements.

The delays come just hours after the travel plans of thousands of Qantas passengers were disrupted by a nationwide computer glitch.

Hundreds were left waiting onboard grounded plans on runways across the country on Sunday night after an IT glitch delayed up to a dozen domestic flights.

Qantas said the issue was discovered at about 4:30pm on Sunday and had impacted 12 domestic flights with some grounded for nearly two hours. The glitch was fixed at about 6pm but caused flow-on delays throughout the evening.

Furious travelers keen to get home in time for the start of the working week took to social media to vent about the delays.

‘Any update on your international computer outage impacting every single flight from departing???? Sitting on fully packed plane on tarmac for 90mins for 2hr is pretty ridiculous!’ one grounded traveler smoked on Twitter.

The computer glitch has also affected Qantas flights across the Tasman trying to take off in New Zealand.

‘Still waiting at 7pm to leave on my Qantas plane from Auckland that was meant to leave at 5.40. Paperwork still has to be signed off,’ one traveler wrote.

Wet weather as well as a surge in flu and Covid cases for airline staff have been blamed for the pattern of delays and cancellations in Sydney and Melbourne.

The latest blunder comes on the back of a tough year for Qantas, with travelers reporting long delays, lost luggage and problems with customer service.

Qantas has cut more flights from its schedule as the airline is plagued with industrial disputes, understaffing, poor organisation, cancellations and delays as furious passengers share their horror experiences of traveling with the national carrier.

The news prompted Qantas Domestic and International CEO Andrew David to issue an on-air apology and vow to do better in the future.

‘Let me start by saying an apology to all your listeners. We are the national carrier, people have high expectations of us, we have high expectations of ourselves and clearly over the last few months we have not been delivering what we did pre-Covid,’ he told 2GB’s Ben Fordham last week.

Mr David confirmed Qantas had ‘reduced some of our flying this month’ and was ‘planning to do the same next month’ amidst ‘operational pressures’.