British holidaymakers are facing enormous delays at airports throughout Europe after the EU's recently launched Entry Exit System sent passport control waiting times soaring.
Queues have been stretching out of terminal buildings at multiple travel hubs, with frustrated passengers enduring waits in sweltering heat.
The new border regime, which requires biometric data collection from non-EU nationals, has had a dramatic impact on processing speeds.
Ivan Bassato, who oversees aviation operations at Rome's Fiumicino airport, revealed to the BBC that the average time for British travellers to clear border checks has surged from seven minutes to 20, nearly three times longer than before the system's introduction.
Airports in Greece, Portugal, Montenegro and Italy have all been affected.
Social media footage from Corfu Airport captured disgruntled travellers standing in a lengthy line on the pavement outside the terminal, with one woman fanning herself in the heat.
Inside, the queue before passport control had ground to a virtual halt. One user posted: 'Still queuing outside Corfu Airport with just over an hour to go til [sic] my flight sets off.'
At Portugal's Faro Airport, video from yesterday morning showed a sprawling, unhappy crowd backed up ahead of border checks, accompanied by the warning: 'If you are travelling today, be prepared.'
Passengers across Europe have been left with hours of delays due to the new system
|GETTY
Montenegro's Tivat Airport saw similar scenes, with queues spilling outdoors.
On the Greek island of Kos, one traveller documented on TikTok a wait lasting roughly 90 minutes, joining the queue at 12.30pm and not clearing it until shortly after 2pm.
Mr Bassato told the BBC that the quality of the passenger experience has deteriorated since the system went live.
"We are not at the point where you have the same quality of the process [as] before the EES," he said.
Despite investing £10.2million in self-service kiosks designed to speed up the registration process, Fiumicino has discovered that funnelling large volumes of passengers through the machines is simply not workable in practice.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
- EasyJet flight descends into chaos after mass 10-person brawl forces plane to turn back to Tenerife for emergency landing
- Israeli passenger planes 'maliciously damaged' at Luton Airport sparking urgent probe
- British tourists among at least 60 holidaymakers hospitalised with toxic gas poisoning after pump broke at Spanish hotel
The new EU's Entry/Exit System was blamed for the delays | GETTYOfficials at Faro Airport have acknowledged that the technology underpinning the EES is plagued by bugs, though they maintained that lengthy queues would subside relatively quickly.
Superintendent Pedro Oliveira, the border control chief at Faro, spelled out the impact on waiting times.
"Sometimes what used to be a 10-minute queue... takes over 30 minutes," he said.
The disruption comes at the height of the summer holiday season, when millions of British tourists travel to popular destinations across southern Europe.
With processing times at some airports now taking up to three times longer than before the system's rollout, passengers heading to the continent are being urged to allow significantly more time at border control to avoid the risk of missing their flights.