A regional daily reporter flew to Dublin in a bid to get to the bottom of airport chaos on his patch.

Lyell Tweed, of the Manchester Evening News, undertook the trip to the Republic of Ireland to investigate ongoing issues at Manchester Airport.

The airport has been beset by huge security queues and hours of flight delays in recent days, and Lyell experienced it first-hand when he arrived there at 5.45am yesterday (5) morning.

Lyell, pictured, was greeted by “a sea of people and noise, with queues in all directions” in the line for security checks. However, he was “very lucky” and able to board his flight – although that was then delayed in taking off by 45 minutes.

Lyell told HTFP: “The airport has been in disarray the past few weeks with terrible pictures of ridiculously long queues and chaos in security.

“We’ve done plenty of stories highlighting this but really wanted to do a first-person piece to really get a feel for it ourselves.

“One of our editors suggested flying to Dublin early in the morning from Manchester to do this and I jumped at the opportunity.

“While I caught a glimpse of huge queues and saw first-hand people missing their flights I luckily, somehow, managed to get into a quieter security queue and made it through with plenty of time.”

Lyell added: “While this was good for me it seems the vast majority of people are still struggling to get through and facing chaos.

“So many people have got in touch with me and the newsdesk who were going through the airport at the same time as me but were waiting hours in queues.”

Lyell is the second regional press journalist in recent days to undertake an international trip on behalf of their newspapers.

HTFP reported last week how Hull Daily Mail local democracy reporter Joe Gerrard sailed to Holland and back to investigate P&O in the wake of the ferry company’s sackings scandal.