Spanish airports will begin waiving the biometric kiosks for families with young children, people with reduced mobility and other vulnerable passengers after chaotic scenes since the EU’s new Entry/Exit System (EES) went live on 10 April. Under internal instructions circulated by the airport operator Aena on 29 April, border-police supervisors must monitor live queue data and, if waiting times at the automated gates exceed 25 minutes, pull eligible travellers into a manual fast-track lane. The directive applies at Madrid-Barajas, Barcelona-El Prat, Málaga-Costa del Sol and every other international gateway in Spain’s network.
![Spanish airports fast-track vulnerable travellers to ease EU Entry/Exit System queues]()
For companies and individual travellers who remain unsure about documentation requirements as these new controls bed in, VisaHQ can simplify the process. The global visa and passport specialist provides real-time guidance and online application tools for Spain, letting clients track progress and avoid last-minute surprises that can lengthen airport queues. Full details are available at https://www.visahq.com/spain/
The move follows more than two weeks of three-hour queues as millions of non-EU visitors—particularly British holiday-makers—registered fingerprints and facial scans for the first time. The bottlenecks have raised fears that the normally lucrative May-to-September tourist season could be derailed, prompting hotel associations and airlines to lobby the Interior Ministry for relief. Aena’s contingency plan also tells ground-handling companies to prioritise passengers who risk missing onward connections, and it commits the National Police to deploy mobile kiosks at peak arrival waves. Travel-management companies welcomed the change, urging corporate travellers to carry paper boarding passes and proof of accommodation to speed manual processing. Looking ahead, border officials insist the pain is temporary: once a traveller’s biometric profile is enrolled, subsequent crossings should take seconds. But with 18 million non-EU arrivals forecast between now and September, companies arranging assignments to Spain should continue to build generous connection buffers and warn assignees that automated gates may not always be the fastest option.
For companies and individual travellers who remain unsure about documentation requirements as these new controls bed in, VisaHQ can simplify the process. The global visa and passport specialist provides real-time guidance and online application tools for Spain, letting clients track progress and avoid last-minute surprises that can lengthen airport queues. Full details are available at https://www.visahq.com/spain/
The move follows more than two weeks of three-hour queues as millions of non-EU visitors—particularly British holiday-makers—registered fingerprints and facial scans for the first time. The bottlenecks have raised fears that the normally lucrative May-to-September tourist season could be derailed, prompting hotel associations and airlines to lobby the Interior Ministry for relief. Aena’s contingency plan also tells ground-handling companies to prioritise passengers who risk missing onward connections, and it commits the National Police to deploy mobile kiosks at peak arrival waves. Travel-management companies welcomed the change, urging corporate travellers to carry paper boarding passes and proof of accommodation to speed manual processing. Looking ahead, border officials insist the pain is temporary: once a traveller’s biometric profile is enrolled, subsequent crossings should take seconds. But with 18 million non-EU arrivals forecast between now and September, companies arranging assignments to Spain should continue to build generous connection buffers and warn assignees that automated gates may not always be the fastest option.
