British passengers returning home via European airports should arrive three hours before their flights, an airline boss has advised, amid concerns about new security procedures causing large queues. The EU entry-exit system (EES), which replaces passport stamps with digital registration, has been gradually introduced since October 2025 and became fully operational last month.
As part of the system, biometric checks are done on entry and exit for non-EU citizens. On Saturday, Wizz Air boss Yvonne Moynihan said: “Because there is another passport check … that’s where we see that people have, again, experienced longer waiting times than anticipated.” She told the BBC that, while usual advice would be to get to the airport two hours before a flight, “in these circumstances, we are advising three hours”.
Moynihan said the impact of the new checks was “fragmented across Europe”. While there has been “seamless travel” in some cases, long queues have appeared at “usual hotspots such as Spain, Portugal, France”. She noted that on her own trip to Mallorca for half-term, there were no queues, extra staff were available, and there were a “significant amount of [EES] kiosks”. However, she advised passengers to expect long waits and to bring a portable charger or water, and suggested allowing several hours between connecting flights.
The European airports association, ACI Europe, has said the “situation is deteriorating”, telling Travel Weekly that queues were up to 3.5 hours at peak times, according to a survey of 45 airports in 20 EU states on 26 May. Last week, French police temporarily suspended the checks at the port of Dover as thousands faced long delays. A spokesperson for the port described the situation as “challenging”, adding that police had invoked an article allowing checks to be temporarily relaxed. The European Commission told the BBC that EES was not the only cause of delays, and registering information usually took about a minute.
