A last-minute hug led to a brief evacuation of part of the airport in St. John's on Wednesday morning, resulting in some flight delays.

Airport officials say a security breach around 6 a.m. local time affected about 500 travellers at St. John's International Airport.

The director of security, Bob Nurse, told CBC News that a woman who had already gone through security screening left the area to give someone outside a goodbye hug.

"The problem with that," Nurse said, "was we couldn't see if something had changed hands, so just to be safe we felt it was better to evacuate the whole room to start the screening process over again."

Nurse said airport officials had to re-screen passengers from five different flights, and it took about an hour before things returned to normal.