Urgent need to resolve European border control delays – IATA

IATA has called for more resources to reduce delays at European airports following new regulations on border control checks. 

The new regulations have caused chaos and significant delays to flights in Europe. Additional security checks take an average of 20 seconds per passenger, resulting in an extra hour to process all passengers on a single flight. In some cases, these delays have caused up to 5% of passengers per day to miss their connecting flights.

In a letter to the European Council of Ministers, IATA says it is supportive of additional border checks to improve security, but also says that governments have failed to heed warnings calling for more resources to prevent delays. According to the letter, the number of delayed flights due to border control issues is up 97%.

IATA says should there be no intervention in the current situation, around 319 million passengers per year will be affected by the enhanced border control, translating to almost half of all passengers travelling through EU airports.