{"id":660691,"date":"2025-12-29T17:22:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T17:22:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/660691\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T17:22:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T17:22:12","slug":"three-hour-airport-queues-for-uk-passengers-as-post-brexit-checks-ramp-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/660691\/","title":{"rendered":"Three-hour airport queues for UK passengers as post-Brexit checks ramp up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\tOlivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, said ‘significant discomfort’ had been inflicted on travellers since the launch of biometric registration in October\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

Passengers are already facing hours of delays due to problems with the rollout of new EU biometrics checks,<\/a> an airport body has warned.<\/p>\n

Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, said \u201csignificant discomfort\u201d had been \u201cinflicted\u201d on travellers since October\u2019s launch of the Entry\/Exit system <\/a>(EES) and warned of \u201cchaos\u201d from next week when checks are ramped up.<\/p>\n

From 9 January, the number of non-EU nationals required to have their fingerprints and photos taken to travel to Europe climbs from 10 per cent to 35 per cent.<\/p>\n

New FeatureIn ShortQuick Stories. Same trusted journalism.<\/p>\n

By April, 100 per cent of arrivals will be required to submit their biometrics for travel to the Schengen area.<\/p>\n

Lisbon is among the airports where passengers have experienced delays in the run-up to Christmas, with reports of three-hour delays after glitches with technology.<\/p>\n

Over Christmas, 80 police officers were drafted in to help with lengthy delays at the Portuguese capital\u2019s airport.<\/p>\n

In October, British holidaymakers told The i Paper they queued in Geneva for more than two hours after landing in Europe due to the new post-Brexit checks.<\/p>\n

Jankovec, the head of Europe\u2019s airport body, said unless operational issues are addressed, next week\u2019s increase to 35 per cent will \u201cinevitably result in much more severe congestion and systemic disruption\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said: \u201cThis will possibly involve serious safety hazards. We fully understand and support the importance of the EES and remain fully committed to its implementation. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut the EES cannot be about mayhem for travelers and chaos at our airports.\u201d<\/p>\n

He demanded \u201cswift action\u201d from the European Commission and Schengen countries in January to allow additional flexibility in the rollout of EES if concerns were not addressed.<\/p>\n

Airline travellers are registered on arrival in Europe while at Dover, Eurotunnel and Eurostar the checks are done on British soil.<\/p>\n

ACI Europe said border control processing times at airports had increased by up to 70 per cent, with waiting times of up to three hours at peak traffic periods. <\/p>\n

France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Portugal and Spain had been particularly affected, the association of European airports said.<\/p>\n

Issues it highlighted included regular EES breakdowns undermining the predictability, regularity and resilience of border operations.<\/p>\n

There had also been persistent configuration problems, including the partial deployment or unavailability of self\u2011service kiosks for registration and biometric data capture, ACI Europe said.<\/p>\n

The continued unavailability of automated border control gates for EES processing at many airports, insufficient deployment of border guards at airports, and the lack of a pre-registration app were also highlighted.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\"Article <\/a><\/p>\n

The International Air Transport Association\u00a0(Iata), a trade body representing around 500 airlines, said members had not reported major problems in the run-up to Christmas.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson told The i Paper: \u201cEES seems seems to have been going OK. It\u2019s still ramping up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose requirements will start to increase, and therefore we\u2019re keeping a close eye on it, because there may be problems.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, said ‘significant discomfort’ had been inflicted on travellers since the launch…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,57780,748,2000,299,5510,5187,1699,4884,183,43656,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-660691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-brexit-travel","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-europe-travel","14":"tag-european","15":"tag-european-union","16":"tag-great-britain","17":"tag-travel","18":"tag-travel-chaos","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115804015475763939","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660691","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=660691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}