To ask for your Easter holiday airport stories - new passport control system/strikes/fuel chaos or pretty chill?

[CurdinHenry]

I stayed at home because I was scared but hope dozens of people are now going to tell me it was all ok

The EES wasn’t being used at Chambery. Just the usual queues to get passports stamped.

No strikes or fuel issues.

Anyone who went to France on Le Shuttle from Folkestone - are they doing the EES yet?

Supposedly they're getting an extension

Totally normal to Nice and back.

Two hours to get through security ar Faro airport. After waiting 40 mins to be scanned, we then waited around and hour and 20 in another queue and all eventually had to go through manual control as the scanners weren't working. Awful.

Just returned via Arricife airport Lanzarote. It was fine for us on leaving, it took about 25 mins from baggage drop, through security and then to complete EES border exit steps mid Saturday afternoon.
The final step is the e-check at the gate for boarding which was very slow and ‘felt’ stressful, but did work fine, even for our under-12 year old.

It was like that at Faro when we went in May half term two years ago. Absolute carnage, without the EES to contend with.

Portugal seems to be having an especially tough time of it

We flew from Stansted to a small airport in Germany, got through passport control including taking photos & fingerprints in no time. We deliberately avoided driving and getting Le Shuttle as it’s always been carnage at Easter.

lots of problems at Tenerife airport.

Palma was horrendous

Very long queue for families at passport control at Palma as they didn't have enough border guards on. very stressful but the staff were trying to help people whose flights were on last call to get to the front.

We travelled as a family of five, with one under 12, to Rome on April 7 - on arrival, we didn't have to use the electronic kiosk things and were sent down a rather long but fast-moving queue. We prob waited half an hour and our passports were stamped in the traditional way. Coming back on April 11, we whizzed through security at Rome airport (we arrived 2 hrs early) but were then put in a massive snaking queue of families to have our passports stamped. The few people travelling without kids had a much much shorter queue for electronic gates. We queued for one hour, we had made it about half way through the queue but our flight was actually boarding. Fortunately, I was finally able to talk to a member of staff (very challenging as there were only two and we were in a sea of people) who looked at our tickets and they sent us down a fasttrack queue to a window. A wisecracking border official then took AGES to check our passports as time ticked away. We had to run to the gate where we were last on the bus going out to the plane. Very stressful and we'd still be in the queue now if we hadn't spoken up. The main issues were: Number of families travelling in school hols - tons. Very very few windows open to actually deal with the passport stamping. Also- officials taking as long as humanly possible to do their jobs. I think the experience of those who actually did the fingerprints/face scan may have been very different. I've heard that in general children will be subject to face scanning only, but they weren't doing that in Rome when we passed through. Absolutely inhumane system and roll-out. I pray it gets better in time.

No bother in Italy other than a few hours delay due to air traffic control strike

No they’re not. We travelled to France that way on Good Friday. We’d heard the systems there for EES were not ready. It was as it always has been previously.

No problems at all in Italy (two different airports). Queues were a little longer than usual, but nothing major. No strikes, traffic control delays, etc, so all very normal.

Just flown back from Venice. They had loads of new terminals could use for finger printing etc, then just pop through the electronic gates. HOWEVER quick tip: when asked if you have any money by the computer say yes . I said no as interpreted it as cash …. so the electronic gate refused me and i had to join manual queue. Asked why and that was the reason. so say yes to money!!

Malta was pretty good, flying out on 7th April and back on 11th. Pretty efficient system.

However, the repeated queue jumping by some fellow British tourists was very annoying, and I hope the airports wise up to this and develop ways to stop it!

No problem at Palma de Mallorca but we didn’t travel on a weekend (Tuesday) and didn’t have kids under 12. Made sure we went through the border gate in zone A well before our flight was due. However there were minimal queues either security or passport check mid afternoon. Was also fine on the way in - very short queue for multiple scanning machines for the finger prints and face scan and staff on hand to help.

You got lucky then. It was when we arrived and also left. Everyone in the same queue even if they had already had the scans on way in. Plus about 5 people at various stages to check passports. All the flights were leaving late.

Berlin took ages, on arrival we all scanned our passports, photos,.finger prints at machines then queued for an hour to do it again with a person and get our stamps.

Took about 45 mins to get checks/stamps on the way home and the plane was an hour late leaving because it had arrived late due to delays at the other side.

Getting through security was a breeze both sides due to no liquid/electronic restrictions.

So.not great but also a lot better than queuing for 2 hours to check.in for a.flight to America in 2022 due to extra covid faff.

Went to La Gomera from London via Tenerife. London airport was slow - we did 1.5 hours and had to run not to miss flight, 2 hours needed really. Slow on return at London too. Tenerife very quick both ways, maybe half an hour each way. Tuesday flights, one in Easter school holidays, one not.

Coming into Billund airport, we had to queue to have photos and fingerprints taken at a machine, and then queue to have photos and fingerprints taken for a second time at the desk - not sure what the purpose of doing the exact same thing twice was but it made it pretty slow.

On the way back, we went to the gate as soon as it was shown and by the time we got through passport control the plane were already boarding. So no problems, but there was no time to spare. You can't afford to spend any time shopping in duty free as you just don't know how long that final passport check will take.

Also, DH and I had already travelled in the EU for work right before our holiday and gone through the EES checks then. I thought the whole point was that you register once for EES and that data is then valid for 3 years so they only verify it the second time which is meant to make it quicker. But this doesn't seem to be the case as we had to do the whole process again.

We missed a flight from Faro last year because it was total carnage at passport control and they weren't allowing people whose flights were closing to come to the front of the queue (we told an officer that we'd been waiting for over an hour in the queue and we were really worried because the flight was closing, and he said that was our problem not his and he didn't care if we missed the flight or not). So Faro has been an issue long before EES, though I'm sure it's even worse now. I'd never go back again after that experience - we lost hundreds of pounds and had to sit in the airport all night.

Just heard from Dover as i wanted to know the arrangements for motorcycles and they haven’t got the technology they need from France yet. No start date as of this morning but said they aren’t expecting any updates for a month or so