To find travel in Europe too stressful now with all the extra passport palaver

[Pavementworrier]

Why do all these new systems work so poorly? Who is getting rich on the stupid shit eye scanner things?

Please tell me soothing tales of recent visits to Europe where it was fine.

I mean it's a bit of a pain, but I don't see how it's that stressful. It's just time-consuming. I just did it before Christmas with a whole group of teenagers I was taking on an exchange trip. It was fine.

You don't see how being stuck in a queue with no one to guide or advice and limited access to toilets, for hours, is stressful?

Again is this why people with human feelings feel compelled to write "I'm ND" so often on Mumsnet?

"I'm ND so I find chaos, poorly ventilated environments, a system that forcibly separates me from my travelling companions based on passport and the risk of wetting myself stressful".

Is this better?

There's almost always toilets in the area between getting off the plane and going through passport control. I try to avoid using them because it can put you hundreds of places further back in the queue, but they're if you need them. There's also nothing to stop you leaving the queue to go to the toilet and rejoining the queue.

I tend to use the loo just before we descend. Then again at baggage reclaim if necessary

I’ll ask again - which airport has queues that are hours long? I’m yet to hear of any anywhere near that bad.

Why do you need a guide or advice? You just wait your turn in the queue! And if you being ND means that you are unable to cope with that, isn’t this exactly what special assistance is for?

Meh travel is stressful, I haven’t noticed much difference tbh.

It is happening fairly regularly in different countries

You need a guide to control the queue otherwise people push to the front and elbow others out of the way... Equally it is quite hard to rejoin a queue if the end is out the door on the tarmac

Fairly regularly in different countries?! Very vague. Makes me think this is hearsay and Chinese whispers.

You cancelled a trip bc you were too stressed about spending 20 minutes standing in a queue?

Stressed about possibly 4 hours in a queue and then possibly missing my flight back because of the further queues

Must say ive travelled all. Over the world regularly and dont recognise this. Think the longest ever queue i had was about an hour and half when system went down at stansted. If that had happened in an eu airport then brexit wouldve not made an ounce of difference as was a computer crash

I’ve seen reports on a local Facebook group of long queues at Málaga airport. Our experience has been that if several planes arrive or depart at once it gets very congested but otherwise not too bad. At the moment they’re trying to process a lot of people at once, but before long there will be fewer travellers registering for the first time.

Went to Malaga in December and there was a facial scanner and a fingerprint thingy. It didn't work for me so still had to go to the kiosk. Seemed a waste of time.

Same. I travel abroad every a weeks or so, all over, never been in a 4 hour queue. What an absurd reason to cancel a holiday for.

https://www.itv.com/news/2025-10-11/uk-travellers-should-expect-four-hour-queues-with-new-eu-border-rules

I recently flew into Bangkok. News was saying about huge queues etc. there was a big queue but was through it in 22 minutes. Wouldn't rely on media sensation stuff

It's such a bullshit naked money grab by a failing Home Office.

All it will do is inconvenience a relatively small number of people and piss them off, and either prohibit or deter others from coming in-- not the people who are any fucking threat to the UK, of course.

Well same all over the world

Some people are getting seriously rich over selling the shitty systems ofc

It’s certainly no worse than the hoops you have to jump through for the United States.

At the end of the day these are the restrictions people voted for. Those who voted leave really have a cheek to complain about the consequences.

I agree that's probably right and that's why I haven't visited the US in over twenty years.

On your second point, the nation I live in didn't voted for it but we were dragged along because some English people thought the British empire still exists.

Spot on! I feel for you.

But that’s a news report from October - warning people of what possibly may happen, it’s not saying that people have actually experienced this.

Several posters on this thread (including myself) have reported travelling since that time and having no problems at all. Some, because the new systems were working OK, and others because the airports they were travelling through weren’t yet using them.

The article does say that April is the deadline, so I reckon if there is a problem leading to these long queues, it will be at Easter, although chances are if systems aren’t in place fully by that time it will probably get pushed back again.

And I know several people who aren't just typists on a screen who have had genuine problems, some worse than four hours

When and where did these experiences happen?

Caused me no problem when I travelled in December.

Idk, it’s not ideal but a bunch of fuckwits voted us out of the EU and free movement of persons for no fathomable reason.