British holidaymakers have voted Tenerife South and Lanzarote airports as the worst in Europe for passport control delays, according to a report in the Canarian Weekly. The warning comes as thousands of UK travellers arrive in the Canary Islands during the peak tourist season.
Ryanair has identified a number of EES hotspot airports where passengers face significant delays, including Lisbon, Tenerife South, Madrid, Lanzarote, Alicante, Malaga, Milan Bergamo, Milan Malpensa, Verona, Paris Beauvais, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt Hahn, Krakow and Budapest. The EU’s Entry/Exit System, which replaced manual passport stamping with digital registration for non-EU nationals, became fully mandatory on April 10 this year.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary said the airline would not wait for passengers stuck in passport queues. He said: “We will not wait for anybody. Our priority is to those passengers who are at the boarding gate when boarding starts. If you’re not at the boarding gate when we finish boarding, the plane is going without you.”
Consumer organisation Which? has ranked Tenerife South as the airport most frequently mentioned for long passport control queues linked to EES. Ryanair’s chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, said: “Families heading away for a well-earned summer holiday should be thinking about suitcases, suncream and sangria, not standing in passport queues for hours. The reality is that the EES system isn’t working properly and families are paying the price for a system that does not work months after launch.”
Separately, travellers to Mallorca’s Palma Airport face strikes by staff responsible for baggage belts, sorting systems and boarding bridges, with further action planned by Swissport workers from Tuesday.
