At many airports in Europe there are sometimes extremely long queues in front of check-in counters, passport control or official “corona checks”. According to Eurocontrol, this also affects the punctuality of flights.

“During the pandemic, departure delays due to“ Immigration, Customs and Health ”increased from near zero to 0,6-0,8 minutes for each flight. In fact, the preliminary data for July hit 0,8 minutes per flight. That is 10-20% of all primary delays, which are due to the extra time needed mainly at check-in to check what the destination specifically needs and whether the passengers have the right combination of test and vaccination certificates. Even if passengers arrive early, in some cases it is not early enough when there are long lines for these controls. As these are departure statistics, they also do not contain any further checks on passengers on arrival, for which there have also been isolated reports of significant delays, ”said Eurocontrol.

In some cases, however, the problems are also home-made by the airlines, because far too few staff are deployed at certain points. Recently, Ryanair caused a sensation at Vienna Airport with very long queues. Also, more and more airlines think they have to play “deputy sheriff”, even though the destination country does not give any instructions on document control. The ground staff, who are mostly employed by third-party providers, are sometimes overwhelmed by the many different regulations.