Britons abroad should arrive at European airports three hours before their flight home departs, the UK boss of a budget airline has warned, as post-Brexit EU border checks continue to cause lengthy queues.
Yvonne Moynihan, managing director of Wizz Air UK, said lengthy delays through passport control due to the new Entry Exit System (EES) had caused some passengers to miss return or connecting flights.
Travellers from outside the European Union are required to register biometric information when entering the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries mainly in the EU.
There have been more than 44.5 million entries and exits registered since the rollout began in October. Over 24,000 have been refused entry, of which over 600 persons were assessed to be security threats to the Union, according to the EU commission.
Ms Moynihan told the BBC that while there had been some “seamless travel”, the impact of the new checks was “fragmented across Europe” with long queues at “usual hotspots such as Spain, Portugal, France”.
Wizz Air has been advising passengers to prepare for long waits.
“When you land in the destination airport, there might be queues, so you should bring a portable charger or water,” she said.
The travel boss added there was a risk of queues on flying back to the UK as the EES information must be verified on exit.
While usually people are advised to get to the airport two hours ahead of their flight, “in these circumstances, we are advising three hours,” she said.
“Because there is another passport check… that’s where we see that people have, again, experienced longer waiting times than anticipated.”
Border officials were proactively suspending EES checks if long waits built up, she said.
Greece has already suspended biometric checks at its borders for British citizens to prevent summer disruption at its airports.
French authorities suspended extra EU border checks over the bank holiday weekend in a bid to ease the waits after Saturday saw holidaymakers face hours-long queues while crossing the Port of Dover.
By Saturday late afternoon, the port said the traffic was “free flowing” on its “peak day of the May half-term getaway weekend”.
Olivier Jankovec, director general of the European Region of the Airports Council International, and Ourania Georgoutsakou, managing director of Airlines for Europe, issued a joint statement, calling on the European Commission and member states to fully or partially suspend EES “where operationally necessary” this summer.
“The combination of full registration requirements and reduced operational flexibility is expected to place unprecedented strain on border control operations,” the statement read.
A European Commission spokesperson said the organisation “is aware of the concerns expressed” and “has been engaging constructively with the industry”.
“With the system operating well, it takes only 70 seconds to register an entry or exit.”
