Ryanair warns of summer ‘queue chaos’ at EU airports over fingerprint checks

Ryanair has warned of “queue chaos” at European Union airports this summer, blaming new fingerprint checks under the bloc’s entry/exit system, as the European Commission called an urgent meeting with the air industry for next Tuesday to address the mounting disruptions [1]. The airline, Europe’s largest by scheduled passengers carried [3], said the entry/exit system (EES) is “still not ready for peak summer volumes” and that passengers should not be used as “guinea pigs for a half-baked passport control system” [1]. Ryanair’s chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, made the statement as industry groups Airlines for Europe and Airports Council International asked the commission to suspend the new border controls at least through July and August, and potentially for a full year [1]. The EES, which was in development for 10 years and finally implemented last October, requires non-EU passengers to register fingerprints and facial images on first entry to the Schengen zone [1]. The EU has said airports can suspend the checks at any time in July and August if queues build up, and officials noted checks are taking an average 70 seconds [1]. More than 100 million of the 500 million non-EU citizens who enter and exit the bloc each year are already registered [1]. Ryanair listed seven airports already experiencing major disruptions: Tenerife South, Palma, Alicante and Málaga in Spain, Milan Bergamo in Italy, Krakow in Poland and Paris Beauvais in France [1]. Milan Bergamo is one of Ryanair’s primary operational bases, alongside Dublin and London Stansted [3]. The airline operates an ultra-low-cost model and manages a fleet of 651 aircraft, serving approximately 230 airports in 36 countries [3]. Aletta von Massenbach, the boss of Berlin airport, said on Thursday that non-EU citizens were facing queues of up to two hours and that the situation is “not bearable over the summer” [1]. Berlin Brandenburg Airport, which opened in October 2020 after years of construction delays, has a theoretical capacity of 46 million passengers per year and serves as a base for Ryanair, easyJet and others [2]. The airport replaced Tempelhof, Schönefeld and Tegel, becoming the only commercial airport serving Berlin and the surrounding state of Brandenburg, an area with 6 million inhabitants [2]. In a letter to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday, the air travel industry said the system was “creating several operational consequences” and called for “immediate intervention before the situation deteriorates further” [1]. The EU has so far recorded more than 100 million entries and exits of the estimated 200 million to 300 million border crossings a year, with some countries including France, Italy and Greece not implementing the system either fully or partly [1]. Under current rules, member states must implement the system fully from September, but industry groups are expected to urge the commission to push back full implementation until summer 2027 [1].