A family of three were left with costs of almost £2,000 after lengthy queues cased by the EU’s controversial border checks.
Matthew Wilson said that he, his wife, and their 14-year-old son, arrived in Milan Linate Airport on 12 April after a nine-night holiday, hoping for a smooth journey home to Manchester.
But while they passed the security queue easily and headed to their gate when was announced, they got stuck in “a very long queue” at passport control, which culminated in them missing their flights.
As a result, Matthew had to spend £1,969 on new flights, taxis, food and accommodation on top of the money they had already paid on their now-cancelled flight. His original flights had totalled £377.
“It was very stressful, Wilson, a 54-year-olf management consultant told The i Paper. “We will think twice before travelling in Europe again.”
Wilson’s experience came days after the launch of Entry/Exit System (EES). Under the system, which began on 10 April, all non-EU citizens heading to the Schengen area no longer receive manual passport stamps. Instead, they must provide their fingerprints and a photo of their face to prevent them from staying in the Schengen countries for more than 90 days in any 180-day period.
The system has been hit with complaints with customers complaining of long waits and others similarly missing flights.
The airline industry’s main trade body, International Air Transport Association has said that waits of around four hours had already been recorded during peak periods and could increase to six hours in some airports this summer.
Meanwhile, in a joint letter this month, trade bodies representing Europe’s airlines and airports wrote to the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen warning EES had led to a “critical point”, with queues of up to five hours.
With school summer holidays beginning on Friday, airports may face even more queues, with around 40 million extra passengers expected at European airports over July and August.
Matthew said that after waiting 90 minutes in the queue for passport control, “we had moved only 10 metres”. He added that there were around three members of staff dealing with some 120 people and, while airport staff asked passengers headed to London “to make themselves aware to the staff”, he was ignored when he pressed staff on whether he would make his flight to Manchester.
Matthew Wilson said that it soon become clear he would miss his flight’s scheduled departure timeSome 10 minutes later, he said the queue “finally began to move” but he was then informed by local ground staff that his plane’s pilot had removed checked luggage, including his family’s three suitcases, as “the flight was going to depart imminently”. The family left the queue, awaiting further guidance from their airline, easyJet.
“We waited in the airport for over 3 hours for an update from easyJet,” he said, before receiving a WhatsApp from the airline offering his family a flight back on 18 April, six days later than his original flight. He said there was “no mention of accommodation or meals or other subsistence expenses for that time”.
Concerned about needing to return to Manchester for work and school, and because flights back the next day “were very expensive,” Wilson booked two night’s accommodation near the airport and flew back to Manchester via Barcelona on 14 April.
This was “all caused by EES”, Matthew said. “My son had to miss some end-of-year examinations; I had to conduct meetings on my phone with clients. My wife was worried about not getting back home in time for the start of the summer term.”
“We were also very concerned about the financial costs to us as a family,” Wilson, who was unable to recuperate costs with travel insurance, said.
Aside from airport queues, the Port of Dover is braced for its busiest weekend of the year, with around 10,000 cars travelling to France on Saturday causing MPs to warn of potential chaos at the port, due to EES.
Modelling previously carried out by the Port of Dover calculated queues from EES could reach up to 12 hours in a worst case scenario, but more recent analysis suggested extra border kiosks would reduce this to around six hours.
Matthew complained to the airport and, in a letter, the customer care team at SEA, the airport operator, apologised for their experience and said that EES “requires more complex operations than before and longer processing times”.
“Unfortunately, on the 12th, there were malfunctions at the automatic gates due to issues connecting to the border systems,” they said. “For this reason, passengers were directed to manual document checks, which resulted in particularly long waiting times.
“All passengers holding non-European passports were processed at manual desks, without the possibility to use the biometric gates.”
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