An Adelaide Airport spokesperson said the breach occurred shortly after 9am, when a fault was detected with a walk-through security scanner that had allowed “a handful” of passengers to pass through un-screened.

“A handful of passengers passed through the scanner and went into the concourse before the fault was discovered and as a result because all of those passengers couldn’t be tracked down, the next step is to evacuate the terminal and rescreen passengers,” the spokesperson said.

Long lines at Adelaide Airport this morning. Photo: Twitter

He said the terminal was fully evacuated and re-screening started about 10.15am.

Massive security lines at Adelaide Airport. Total mismanagement . Looks like adelaide airport has no idea how many people are leaving at one given time pic.twitter.com/fP5dfl9mcj

— R Hassan (@rhassan2010) October 10, 2022

The spokesperson said it was estimated about 2000 passengers had to be re-screened, causing delays to about 10 domestic flights and one international flight – a Singapore Airlines flight.

Passengers are being asked to check with their airline for updated flight information.

We are currently investigating a security breach at #AdelaideAirport, that occurred this morning shortly after 9am.

There are likely to be some flight delays.

For more information, please see our latest Facebook post: https://t.co/UAW4g1j4qN

— Adelaide Airport (@AdelaideAirport) October 11, 2022

Adelaide Airport managing director Brenton Cox apologised for the impact on customers and said he was impressed with their goodwill.

“People were incredibly understanding, incredibly kind,” he said.

He said it was “a real disappointment” the equipment failed and how that occurred was now under investigation.

“This is the sort of thing that unfortunately does happen from time to time,” he said.

“The equipment is never perfect but in this case the failsafe of the human intervention really worked to make sure that everything ended up being safe and secure this morning.

“The security are trained to observe the equipment. The appropriate lights (on the scanner) were not on. They made the call up to CCTV to then assess how many people had gone through. Once it was determined there were a number of people we couldn’t immediately identify then we had to spill the terminal after that.”

A security breach also affected Melbourne Airport this morning.

Federal police shut down a section of the Melbourne Airport terminal and ordered passengers from a plane ready for take-off.

A Qantas passenger allegedly entered security gates without being screened, which led to other passengers having to evacuate the area before being re-screened.

The airline has apologised to customers as it investigates.

“A passenger appears to have inadvertently passed from an unscreened area to a screened area of the airport in Melbourne,” a Qantas spokesperson said.

“As a precaution, all Qantas operations have been put on hold and passengers in the terminal are being re-screened, which is causing delays to some services this morning.

“Safety is our number one priority but we know this disruption is causing some inconvenience for our passengers and we apologise for that. We are investigating how this incident occurred.”

In a post on Twitter about 7.30am, Melbourne Airport officials said screening of passengers in T1 had resumed although delays were expected.

In September, confusion reigned after a passenger inadvertently passed from an unscreened area to a screened one in Sydney ahead of a Melbourne-bound flight.

A plane-load of people were escorted straight to the baggage terminal on arrival to avoid compromising the security of Melbourne Airport upon landing.

-with AAP