{"id":561514,"date":"2026-05-02T00:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T00:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/561514\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T00:21:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T00:21:09","slug":"ryanair-urges-uk-and-eu-governments-to-suspend-new-ees-border-checks-as-queues-mount","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/561514\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryanair Urges UK and EU Governments to Suspend New EES Border Checks as Queues Mount"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Europe\u2019s largest airline, Ryanair, has written to transport ministers in all 29 countries participating in the EU Entry\/Exit System (EES) demanding that the biometric border regime be paused until at least September 2026. The carrier says the first three weeks of live operations have produced \u201cunacceptable\u201d passport-control queues for British holiday-makers and business travellers alike, causing some to miss flights out of UK airports. The letter, disclosed on 30 April by ITV News, brands the launch \u201cbotched\u201d and claims airports were given just four weeks\u2019 notice of full enforcement. Under EES, non-EU nationals\u2014including UK citizens post-Brexit\u2014must provide facial images and four fingerprints the first time they cross an external Schengen frontier. Although the system went live on 10 April, many e-gates in Spain, Portugal and France remain offline, forcing manual processing. <\/p>\n

\"Ryanair<\/p>\n

For travellers who want to be certain they have met every new documentation requirement before arriving at the airport, VisaHQ can provide end-to-end assistance. Through its dedicated UK platform (https:\/\/www.visahq.com\/united-kingdom\/<\/a>), the company supplies real-time updates on EES implementation, tailored guidance for business and leisure itineraries, and optional concierge services that help individuals and mobility managers gather the correct paperwork and schedule biometric enrolment in advance\u2014saving time and reducing the risk of missed flights.<\/p>\n

Ryanair says queues of over two hours were reported at M\u00e1laga and Faro during the recent school-holiday peak, while Stansted saw \u201cknock-on delays\u201d when outbound flights waited for late connecting passengers. For corporate mobility teams the disruption is two-fold. First, duty travellers face potential schedule slippage when transiting through the EU on tight connections; second, companies may incur higher costs from re-ticketing and duty-of-care provisioning when employees are stranded. Travel-management companies are already advising clients to add a minimum 90-minute buffer for intra-Schengen transfers until biometric kiosks reach full capacity. The UK government has limited influence\u2014EES is an EU competence\u2014but the Department for Transport confirmed it is in \u201cactive discussions\u201d with Brussels about mitigation steps before Britain\u2019s own summer holiday surge. Options include staggered enforcement at smaller regional airports and temporary waivers for families with young children, whose fingerprints are harder to capture. If no pause materialises, UK organisations should prepare traveller-comms campaigns explaining the new biometric requirement, encourage staff to pre-register via available pilot apps where offered, and budget for potential overtime claims from mobile workers delayed on return journeys.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s largest airline, Ryanair, has written to transport ministers in all 29 countries participating in the EU Entry\/Exit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-561514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}