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

[mimimoo2]

We have a package holiday booked to one of the Balearic Islands for next week. I’ve heard lots of horror stories about the new finger print checks at passport control and how they are taking hours. Has anyone been away recently and encountered this? No info from Tui about this (not that I’ve seen anyway) but we have a late flight going out and back and worried about the dc if it’s true we’ll be waiting in line for hours on arrival. Do we need to be at the airport much earlier coming back as well?

Because it is nothing to do with the US

Took almost an hour in the passport queue when I landed in Zurich in May. 😡

But Turkey in June waved us straight through and Greece sent us to the EEA queue (which we thought we might get told off about but nope) and we were through in 5 mins. Norway this month took 10 mins and I got quite a grilling about my plans while there. I’m used to being grilled on arrival in the US but historically Norway has been quite relaxed. No longer it seems. Don’t even get me started on the OTT security search of my hand luggage when I was trying to leave Norway.

I think we were unlucky in that loads of planes had landed in a short space of time, so the queues were outrageous. My sister and BIL came early evening on the same day and it took them about 20 minutes!
(But I had read to expect long queues at Palma)

Arrivals at Faro took just over an hour in June for Non-EU. Departures was less than 5 mins.

We breezed through pretty quickly in Malta in April and in Salzburg last week. Despite having now used this system four times (in and out on two holidays) I am still baffled by it. There seems to be no particular logic about when you are fingerprinted, say. In Malta they took fingerprints in both directions, in Salzburg only on the way in.

The ‘horror stories’ are exaggerated clickbait nonsense. It’s fine now. Things have ‘settled down’ & are working smoothly.

Me too, I was dreading going because of this but no, no fingerprint coming or going 2 weeks ago.

I’ve been to Spain twice, no ques - family que separate and took about 5 mins max. Each of our finger prints and faces were scanned both ways.

Took 3 hours last night in Spain .....

Small Airport in France in June. Pretty quick, but I was fortunate enough to be toward the front of the initial queue on arrival. I think the people last off the flight probably had 40-50 minutes to queue. That was prints and a photo.

On departure we went through to the lounge as quickly as we could. That was a two minute queue (if that) and they didn’t take/check prints or photo, it was just a standard look at our passports.

Sailed through Murcia in May.

Faro earlier this month was a nightmare - about 2 hours or so each way. Big queues on the way in and 2 out of 4 of us had to queue again for manual checks as machines crashed. Got there 3 hours early coming back - none of the machines working so manual checks only & had no time to spare. Monday morning flights - I think lots landed / left in short space of time, according to FB it was fine later in the day / week.

I dropped my duty free and smashed it in the queue, Bacardi drenched feet, which didn’t make me an asset 😵‍💫

5 minutes landing in Lisbon, maybe 10 minutes flying out of Faro a few weeks ago, Slowed down slightly in Faro by DD having glue from her fake nails distorting her fingerprint so she had to go to a manual booth - everyone else straight through the e-gates with no issues,

Turkey? Turkiye? That's got nothing to do with Schengen.

So basically there are multiple 'kiosks' at the EU / Schengen destination airport, is this correct?

Surely no one needs to do anything when they're flying back to the UK?

I know! It’s not intended for people at UK airports with British passports! Or NY!

Sort of.

Flying back to UK Brit passport holders leaving from Schengen zone airports have to log out of the Schengen area, so there's an outbound check, usually after security.

Mainly done to make it easier to monitor compliance with the 90/180 requirement.

Sweden earlier this year, fingerprinted and photographed on the way in and on the way out. No kiosks or e-gates. Denmark, kiosks on the way to scan passports, then just photographed on the way in and way out, again no e-gates.

Every airport seems to do things differently.

I see. Thank you.

With all these finger prints and fotos collected, can European police ever use these to solve crimes?

Mallorca (Palma) last week was fine. Loads of staff

It’s due to luck I think. How many people are arriving, are the machines working, time of day, who is in charge etc.

When we got to Rome, staff were shouting at people not to use the kiosks. We then went down escalators and were ‘kettled’ in a big confused crowd for five to ten mins whilst more people were coming down the escalator with nowhere to go. A bit scary. Then a man called out that those with UK, US and Aus passports should go directly to the e gates. Which had fingerprint machines. No idea if that’s EES or not. The whole thing took under an hour for us. The poor people with other passports were looking at 2-3hour waits. Awful. Yet on other days, people breeze through Rome passport control.

We had no extra checks when leaving Rome. Just normal passport check at the gate.

I really think it’s a matter of luck and it’s quite unpredictable. Though some airports are def better than others.

I flew into Ciampino, Rome in April. At this point it was still the “soft” roll out, the full roll out starting the day after we flew back. The problem I had was that the tip of my right middle finger is missing due to an injury a number of years ago. The fingerprint machine was having none of it -if you were allowed to scan the left hand instead it’d have been fine but no….Anyway I was manually processed and that took about 20 minutes, including queuing. My 2 adult sons sailed through with no problems via the automated system but as I say this was just before the full roll out. No issues coming home and I got my passport stamped as entered the “old school” way. Flying to Sorrento in August. No doubt there will be more fun and games 🙄

You really can’t speak for every airport there!

Gosh this is making me nervous. We fly into Berlin in October so wondering how early we need to get to the airport for flight home 😳

Other than maybe camp outside the night before do you have any tips? It will be our first time using y he tech as we haven’t flown for a few years

Just hoping the ETIAS thing hasn’t rolled out by then!

No idea about data sharing.

TBF Schengen/the EU aren't the first to go for finger print checking at borders, guess it's something travellers will have to increasingly get used to.