The Qantas Airways Limited (ASX: QAN) share price is marching higher in early trade, up 0.8%.
Shares in the flying kangaroo closed yesterday trading for $5.20 and are currently trading for $5.24 apiece.
The gains come despite a security screening breach at Melbourne Airport that led to lengthy delays for passengers early this morning.
What happened at Melbourne Airport?
The Qantas share price appears unimpacted by news of the major security breach.
Thousands of passengers who had already passed through the security checkpoint needed to return from the terminal to be screened a second time. As you'd expect, this led to lengthy queues and flight delays for frustrated travellers.
The cause for the disruptions appears to be an accidental move by one of the passengers at the airport.
Commenting on the occurrence, a Qantas spokesperson said:
A passenger appears to have inadvertently passed from an unscreened area to a screened area of the airport in Melbourne. As a precaution all Qantas operations have been put on hold and passengers in the terminal are being rescreened, which is causing delays to some services this morning.
Qantas stressed that the rescreening was done with safety foremost in mind and apologised for the trouble that was caused:
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.
With numerous flights delayed in Melbourne, the interruptions are likely to impact airports and travellers across Australia today.
Qantas share price snapshot
Despite still recovering from the pandemic impacts, the Qantas share price has managed to outperform the S&P/ASX 200 Index (ASX: XJO) in 2022.
Qantas shares are up 2% this calendar year compared to a year-to-date loss of 12% posted by the benchmark index.
