Budget carrier Ryanair has emailed passengers departing Spain this week urging them to arrive “well ahead of schedule” after several holidaymakers missed flights when biometric Entry/Exit System (EES) kiosks crashed at passport control. The warning, published on 31 December, follows social-media footage of 90-minute queues at Málaga-Costa del Sol and Alicante in the peak post-Christmas rush.
EES is the EU’s new border-management platform that replaces manual passport stamping for non-Schengen nationals, including travellers from Ireland and the United Kingdom. While the technology went live in Spain in October, police unions say staffing levels and training have not kept pace with Christmas volumes, creating bottlenecks whenever the fingerprint scanners require manual override.
For travellers who want to be certain their paperwork is in perfect order before they even reach the terminal, VisaHQ’s team of visa and travel-document experts can provide up-to-the-minute guidance on Spain’s evolving entry rules and the wider EES rollout. Their Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/) lets both corporate and leisure customers track regulatory changes, obtain any required visas, and access fast, hands-on support—saving time when every minute at the airport counts.
![Ryanair warns travellers of long EES queues at Spanish airports]()
For corporate travel managers, the disruption has two consequences. First, even “fast-track” premium lanes are affected because biometric capture occurs before airline status lanes diverge. Second, missed-flight compensation claims may be denied on the grounds that border control is outside a carrier’s control, although Ryanair says it will “look sympathetically” at genuine cases.
Ryanair’s memo recommends that passengers proceeding to non-Schengen destinations head straight to passport control after bag drop, bypassing duty-free stops. Companies with late-evening rotations out of Spain are advising employees to build an extra hour into itineraries until the Three Kings holiday traffic subsides next week.
Spanish transport ministry officials told local media they will redeploy 120 additional National-Police officers to high-volume airports from 2 January and review EES kiosk workflows before the Easter surge.
EES is the EU’s new border-management platform that replaces manual passport stamping for non-Schengen nationals, including travellers from Ireland and the United Kingdom. While the technology went live in Spain in October, police unions say staffing levels and training have not kept pace with Christmas volumes, creating bottlenecks whenever the fingerprint scanners require manual override.
For travellers who want to be certain their paperwork is in perfect order before they even reach the terminal, VisaHQ’s team of visa and travel-document experts can provide up-to-the-minute guidance on Spain’s evolving entry rules and the wider EES rollout. Their Spain portal (https://www.visahq.com/spain/) lets both corporate and leisure customers track regulatory changes, obtain any required visas, and access fast, hands-on support—saving time when every minute at the airport counts.
For corporate travel managers, the disruption has two consequences. First, even “fast-track” premium lanes are affected because biometric capture occurs before airline status lanes diverge. Second, missed-flight compensation claims may be denied on the grounds that border control is outside a carrier’s control, although Ryanair says it will “look sympathetically” at genuine cases.
Ryanair’s memo recommends that passengers proceeding to non-Schengen destinations head straight to passport control after bag drop, bypassing duty-free stops. Companies with late-evening rotations out of Spain are advising employees to build an extra hour into itineraries until the Three Kings holiday traffic subsides next week.
Spanish transport ministry officials told local media they will redeploy 120 additional National-Police officers to high-volume airports from 2 January and review EES kiosk workflows before the Easter surge.
