BRITISH holidaymakers travelling home from Europe should arrive at airports three hours before departure because of long queues linked to new border checks, Wizz Air UK boss Yvonne Moynihan has said.
Moynihan told the BBC that delays at passport control at some European airports had caused passengers to miss return and connecting flights.
The new Entry Exit System (EES) requires travellers from outside the EU to register biometric details, including fingerprints, when entering many European countries. The information is then checked again when they leave. Since October, almost 80 million entries and exits have been recorded, along with 35,000 refusals of entry.
Moynihan said the impact of the checks had been “fragmented across Europe”. While some airports had “seamless travel”, she said long queues had been seen in “usual hotspots such as Spain, Portugal, France”.
She said Wizz Air was advising passengers to prepare for delays both on arrival and before flights back to the UK. “Because there is another passport check... that's where we see that people have, again, experienced longer waiting times than anticipated,” she said.
She added: “Usually we advise two hours, but in these circumstances, we are advising three hours.”
ACI Europe told the BBC that queues caused by EES had reached up to three-and-a-half hours at some airports and warned the situation could worsen during the summer peak.
The European Commission told the BBC the system was working well at “almost all border crossing points” and said biometric checks could be temporarily suspended in cases of excessive waiting times.
On summer travel demand, Moynihan said passengers “should feel confident booking”, adding that no fuel shortages or cuts to Wizz Air’s schedule were expected.
