Anyone been abroad recently and can advise about finger print checks at airports?

😂

When was this brought in?? Flown 5 times so far this year (Netherlands Germany) and never been asked for fingerprints?!

Landed in Ibiza on 10th July, the whole fingerprint thing took about 15 mins.
leaving the country, it took even less time

I flew through the UK recently and didn't do any fingerprint checks

It was boarding pass scanned and picture of your face

Ive been to Spain twice and Italy once since it was introduced. No problems with Spain. Things were a bit chaotic in Italy though but no significant delays just confusion by people who weren't sure what was happening.

This is making me worry about our flight on Saturday. I have two autistics with scoliosis and my oldest has a spinal injury and can’t wait in queues too long.
My youngest has ADHD and will likely try to run away if a queue takes too much time.
I have booked assistance at Manchester airport, but we are flying Tui into a small Spanish airport…

Madeira isn’t coping well with it. Two hour wait on arrival. Machines not working, two staff on the border gate checking everyone.

we were on the first flight from uk, god knows how long the people on the two planes that landed just behind us waited.

It wasn’t so bad on the way out. Two separate sections took 40 mins total.

We went to Menorca a couple of weeks ago - no problems arriving or leaving.

Came back from Tenerife a couple of weeks ago and it was fine - I'm European but DH had to do the fingerprint registration and it took no more than 10 minutes or so including queuing. Suspect it depends on when you land and how many other flights arrive at a similar time.

We flew back from one of the Balearic islands today. No problem going through either direction. DCs are teenagers though.

Return transfer (Tui) picked us up just under 3 hours before our flight was due and that was plenty of time.

Pisa seems to have decided that the queues were too long and ditched the machines. We went through earlier in the week and just queued to see a person who glanced at my passport and then waved me through.

Flew in and out of Milan a week ago, supposedly one of the worst airports when lots of people missed their flights at Easter … no queue at all either way. We were directed to a queue for the manned booths with an under 12, rather than the kiosks, but they didn’t seem to have any real queues either. The weird thing was the border agent didn’t actually take our photos or do our fingerprints, yet nor did they stamp our passports 🤷‍♀️

Was in Sardinia last week and it took 90 minutes on arrival to reach the front of the queue. It took us only 5 minutes to do it all once there.

On the way back, we went to the gate early and still queued 20 minutes.

Went to Athens in March, all worked fine.So my details should have been registered. Went to Amsterdam in May, now I am not registered?? Took about an hour to get through. So you think I'd be registered having done it all twice. Paris last week I'm not registered and it was chaotic.

2 hour queue in Prague last week. Also in Germany.

In both places it wasn't the machines, there were lots of them and it was quite quick.
But after the machines we then had to queue to be seen at a booth by a police officer who looked at your passport🤷. The passport that's just been scanned!

There were about 30 machines.
There were only 5 booths with policemen open.😡

Seriously, what is the point of the machines if you have to queue to see a person as well?

Just back from the Canaries and as I did this in Spain on my own last year thought it would be fine. It wasn’t.
There are separate queues for adults and kids over 12. The families queue was awful.
We queued with the adults and it wasn’t much better.
The self service machines don’t like fake eyelashes when you eventually get to the front, so if like me you have a teen with stupid Russian looking lashes it keeps flashing until you give up, then you have to start queuing all over again for a different machine. With a Spanish woman shouting at you telling you it’s your fault. The second machines which are manned ish are better and she got it to recognise her face. I wasn’t allowed to help her so I just told her to open her eyes as much as possible.
I tried to tell them about this when we were coming home and was sent to a different queue which was slightly better. I was threatened with the Police whilst trying to explain the machines wouldn’t take the photo with her lashes on when we came out. I just shut up at that point and got in a queue.
Machines were fine with me, not with DD.
Queues took so long we missed our transfer and had to wait an extra 90 mins in the airport for another one arriving at our hotel after the restaurant has closed.
She’s not wearing lashes next time we go away.

Just done it on Monday. No problem.

We went to Mallorca in early June and had no trouble registering etc on arrival. I don't think it took any longer than things had in previous years, and was actually quicker than some. Coming home was fine - security had definitely improved since a couple of years ago, but queuing at check-in was just as bad.

A mixed bag.

Paris CDG: quite chaotic, best part of 45m.
Barcelona: easy breezy, took 10m
Gdansk: fucking awful. 90m
Venice: fine. 20m
Porto: also fine. 15m.

You are usually asked to complete a kind of pre-queue process at the machine, where you have to give details of your trip and do the photo/fingerprint. The queues for these are minimal and fast IME, as they have them laid out in large numbers. It's the second bit that could take time - if you're directed to passport control it tends to move slowly, but if it's an E-gate situation the queues go down fast.

Unfortunately I’ve waited an hour before any of this started in Spain, it depends on how many non eu flights have arrived in quick succession. They do pull those with little ones from the queue typically but it does depend how many dc are on the flights

Just back from Tenerife and no queues going or coming back. Evening flight leaving Tenerife and we waltzed through every step.

You need to check the specific airport as it varies so much. Search up on TikTok loads of people sharing their experiences. Some airports there are hacks to smooth the process.

But also depends on how many flights are landing at that time and where from.

It seems to depend very much on the airport. I was in Trieste (smallish airport) in May and went straight through, no queues or delay.

Then I was in Copenhagen in June (much bigger airport). Went straight to passport control as soon as the flight was called. Only just made the flight - 12 people behind me were denied boarding. This was Ryanair and they don't care.

The only advice I can give is get to the airport super early and go straight to passport control - don't wait for the flight to be called.

We flew in and out of Birmingham. They had a separate queue for families and they’re very strict as one woman tried to queue jump by attaching herself to a family. The queue was quite quick but the worst bit was the photograph. Who does the lighting? I saw myself in the camera and I looked like a 100 year old angry bitch faced hag. I wasn’t even in a bad mood.