Hundreds of thousands of British holidaymakers face being trapped in queues of up to five hours at European airports this summer, as controversial new border checks strain capacity. Airlines and airports have pleaded with the EU to switch off the Entry/Exit System (EES) at the busiest times, warning that some flights are departing half-empty because passengers are stuck in immigration queues.
What is the EES and why is it causing delays?
The EES replaces the old ink passport stamp with a digital record shared across 29 countries. UK travellers must provide fingerprints and have their photograph taken by a border guard or kiosk when entering the Schengen area. The system has been fully operational since April, but industry chiefs say the real test is now arriving, with an estimated 40 million extra passengers expected to pass through European airports in July and August compared with May and June, according to the BBC.
Critical point reached, warn airlines
In a hard-hitting open letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, trade bodies representing Europe's airlines and airports – Airlines for Europe, ACI Europe and the International Air Transport Association – stated: "Today we have reached a critical point." They demanded the power to suspend fingerprint checks entirely in July and August whenever queues outstrip what border posts can handle.
Ryanair went further, with chief operating officer Neal McMahon accusing Brussels of treating holidaymakers as "guinea pigs for a half-baked passport control system" and calling for EES to be postponed until September altogether.
Safety valve removed
Before the system went fully live, border guards could switch off EES at busy periods to keep queues moving. That safety valve was removed at the end of March, leaving airports with no way to relieve the pressure when things go wrong.
Families left out of pocket
The human cost of the delays is mounting. Passengers caught out by queues have described chaotic scenes at check-in, including one traveller who told how a fellow passenger fainted and another was sick while waiting to be processed. One family from the North West said they arrived a full three hours before their flight home from Milan, only to be turned away from processing because a departure gate had not yet been allocated. By the time officials began working through the queue, they had missed the flight and were forced to pay out around £1,000 to book replacement seats home to Gatwick.
Under current rules, travellers who miss a flight because of border delays have little recourse. Airlines are not obliged to rebook passengers free of charge, and insurers say ordinary travel policies are unlikely to pay out either, because queuing at the border is considered a routine part of travel rather than an unforeseen event.
What you can do to protect your trip
Despite the chaos, there are ways to reduce the risk of being caught out. Build in extra time. Airports including Geneva are telling passengers who still need to register their fingerprints to allow up to four hours before a flight, while quieter airports such as Faro, Lisbon and Munich say two-and-a-half to three hours should normally be enough. Anyone flying through the busiest hubs – Paris Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam Schiphol and Frankfurt – during the early morning rush is being told to treat three hours as an absolute minimum.
Register in advance where you can. The EU's own "Travel to Europe" app allows travellers to submit their passport details and a facial image up to 72 hours before departure, which can shave time off the process at the border – though not every airport supports it yet, and it does not remove the need to queue.
Remember it gets quicker after your first trip. Once fingerprints and a photograph have been taken, the data is stored for three years, meaning later crossings should involve only a quick facial check rather than a full registration – so the worst delays tend to hit first-time travellers hardest.
Check your paperwork
Insurance experts say cover for missed flights or delays caused by border queues is patchy at best, so travellers should check the small print on missed departure or delay and abandonment cover before they fly, rather than assuming they are protected.
Sign up for alerts. Airlines including easyJet, Jet2 and Ryanair are urging passengers to download their apps and switch on notifications so they can be warned in advance of unusually long queues at their departure airport.
Despite the disruption, aviation chiefs insist most passengers are still getting through with minimal fuss, and surveys suggest the majority of travellers support the principle of tighter digital borders once they understand why the checks are in place. The complaint from the industry is not with the system itself, but with the lack of flexibility to ease the pressure when queues spiral out of control during the busiest weeks of the year.
