Britons face up to 'six-hour waits' at airports due to post-Brexit EU border checks
Brits could face queues of up to six hours this summer due to Europe’s new EES immigration system, an airline body has warned.
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The International Air Transport Association (Iata), the airline trade body, said the EU’s border system meant a “hard risk” of long waiting times that have resulted in people missing flights.
Airlines including Ryanair and WizzAir, have already warned they will not wait for customers stuck at passport control this summer.
The EES system required passengers from outside Europe to have their fingerprints and photo taken, so they can be checked again when they leave the country.
The system has been labelled a ‘punishment for Brexit’ by the CEO of Ryanair.
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Rafael Schvartzman, the vice-president for Europe of the Iata, has said that some airports do not yet have the required technology or staffing to make the system run smoothly.
What we are seeing is a very hard risk of really challenging times or waiting times, talking about expectations of three, four, five, six hours which is unacceptable,” he said.
Airlines are telling passengers to get to the airport three hours before flights back the UK. Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, has said his airline would not wait for passengers in queues.
“Ryanair takes every passenger that is in the boarding gate when the boarding goes out. Passengers miss their flight not because we’ve left them behind but because they are stuck in somebody’s passport queue,” he said.
Mr Schvartzman said: “Without EES it takes between 20 and 25 seconds to process a passenger. With EES we are talking about 90 seconds and on top of that you still have issues with technology you can imagine what the breaking effect would be.”
Over Easter, the EES system caused chaos at Milan’s Linate Airport where more than 100 people were left behind because of a three-hour wait at passport control.
Last month, a Ryanair flight going from Toulouse to London took off without 150 passengers because of queues caused by the EES system.