{"id":493773,"date":"2025-10-12T14:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T14:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/493773\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T14:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T14:28:13","slug":"hour-long-queues-in-prague-airport-as-eu-entry-exit-system-comes-into-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/493773\/","title":{"rendered":"Hour-long queues in Prague airport as EU entry-exit system comes into effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

Massive queues have built up at one of the few EU airports where the new entry-exit system<\/a> has taken effect on day one.<\/p>\n

The Schengen area digital borders scheme is being gradually rolled out across Europe, but three countries have said they will start fingerprinting and photographing all \u201cthird-country nationals\u201d from the outset: the Czech Republic, Estonia and Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

Early passengers landing from the UK at Prague airport \u2013 by far the biggest arrival point \u2013 said they had gone through the normal analogue checks without a significant wait.<\/p>\n

But the authorities have now ordered passport staff to start taking fingerprints and facial biometrics at their posts rather than using the dozens of border registration machines that have been installed for that purpose.<\/p>\n

As a result queues have built up as arrivals from British airports as well as Turkey, Egypt and the UAE converge on the passport desks in Terminal 1 of Prague airport.<\/p>\n

One arrival from Leeds Bradford, Stuart Linden Rhodes, told The Independent: \u201cAll machines still switched off, heading to an hour now. Fingers and eyes being done at the passport control desk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Waiting<\/p>\n

Waiting game: International arrivals area at Prague airport (Simon Calder)<\/p>\n

Starting on Sunday 12 October, Schengen area member states have 180 days to make all their frontiers EES-compliant. That means the faces and fingerprints of third-country nationals such as the British are stored on a central EU database.<\/p>\n

Senior travel figures have warned of long waits. Michael O\u2019Leary, chief executive of Ryanair, said: \u201cI\u2019m pretty certain it’s going to go wrong.\u201d But he added: \u201cWe’re moving into the winter period, so there’s a lot less pressure on, but I think it will be bumpy and lumpy through the winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Tanzer, chief executive of Abta, the travel association, was frank about the challenge posed by the digital borders plan. \u201cI\u2019m afraid there will undoubtedly be some delays as this new entry and exit system for the Schengen area comes into effect,\u201d he told The Independent.<\/p>\n

Julia Lo Bue-Said, chief executive of Advantage Travel Partnership, advises \u201cleaving yourself between three and four hours from the point of entry\u201d before you plan to do anything sensible.<\/p>\n

She told the BBC Today programme: \u201cIf you’re not leaving yourself enough time and you unfortunately arrive at an airport where there is a bottleneck, which in a lot of places there are already, this is going to add another layer of frustration and delay.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Schengen area (comprising most of the EU plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) has 1,800 border crossings, with more than 500 million entries and exits a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Massive queues have built up at one of the few EU airports where the new entry-exit system has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[162621,2000,299,5187,35065,102487,34589,160138,162622],"class_list":{"0":"post-493773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-british-airports","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-leeds-bradford","13":"tag-prague-airport","14":"tag-schengen-area","15":"tag-simon-calder","16":"tag-stuart-linden-rhodes"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115361671989073156","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}