{"id":10559,"date":"2026-04-23T19:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T19:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/10559\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T19:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T19:36:08","slug":"spain-airports-introduce-new-25-minute-rule-boost-for-holidaymakers-travel-news-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/10559\/","title":{"rendered":"Spain airports introduce new 25 minute rule \u2013 boost for holidaymakers | Travel News | Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brits facing three to four hour queues at Spanish airports<\/a> due to the new border controls now face a glimmer of light. Spanish airports have introduced a new rule for holidaymakers.<\/p>\n

Whilst Spain<\/a> hasn’t followed Greece<\/a> which has temporarily lifted biometric entry and exit procedures<\/a>, airports are to help relieve the horrendous waits. The Spanish airport authority AENA has instructed staff to assist the most vulnerable passengers including families with young children and people with disabilities. According to reports in the Spanish press, they will assist these groups to go straight through to passport control if the wait to input data on the new biometric machines exceeds 25 minutes. Brits have been reporting waits of up to four hours because the queues are so long with hundreds of frustrated passengers in them.<\/p>\n

Many have missed their flights because they could not check in on time. Suitcases have been unloaded and the planes taken off without them.<\/p>\n

Greece says it isn’t prepared to put up with the situation caused by the new European Union<\/a> rules and has temporarily suspended biometric checks. These include the taking of photos and fingerprints.<\/p>\n

The airports of Palma de Mallorca,<\/a> M\u00e1laga, Alicante<\/a>, Madrid and Barcelona<\/a> have all confirmed their technology is working properly but acknowledge that the volume of passengers at busy times outweighed the capacity.<\/p>\n

Frontline staff have been instructed to temporarily divert families and passengers with reduced mobility to the traditional passport stamping queues if they have to wait 25 minutes at biometrics.<\/p>\n

They can also stagger flight arrivals in consultation with AENA’s flight arrival team. It has already been tested in M\u00e1laga<\/a>. The measures are being described as an adjustment not a suspension.<\/p>\n

The new EEC regulation<\/a> has been widely criticised by the travel industry and airlines and other countries are said to be thinking about following Greece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brits facing three to four hour queues at Spanish airports due to the new border controls now face…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10560,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[949,6612,2000,6613,826,6610,17,6611],"class_list":["post-10559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-spain","tag-airports","tag-biometric-entry","tag-border-controls","tag-holidaymakers","tag-immigration","tag-passport","tag-spain","tag-spain-airports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}