Ryanair names airports with long Entry/Exit System queues

Ryanair has identified seven popular European airports where passengers are suffering long delays because of new EU border checks.

It said airports which are particularly struggling with the Entry/Exit System (EES) are Tenerife South, Palma, Alicante and Malaga, all in Spain; Milan Bergamo in Italy; Krakow in Poland and France’s Paris Beauvais.

Ryanair said these sites are “not ready” to manage the high passenger volumes during the peak summer season because of “insufficient staff, kiosks and system readiness”.

The Entry/Exit System (EES), rolled out fully in April, involves people from third-party countries such as the UK having their fingerprints registered and photograph taken to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

The Schengen Area includes Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Ireland has maintained an opt-out from Schengen to preserve the Common Travel Area with the UK.

Ryanair is advising passengers travelling between Schengen and non-Schengen destinations this summer to arrive at airports earlier than usual, as it warned families “face passport queue chaos” ecause of EES.

The airline urged European governments to “suspend the rollout” of EES until September to avoid passengers suffering “long and avoidable passport control queues”.

It said it has urged the governments of “the most exposed countries” to take action but “there has been zero response to fix this major challenge”.

“As schools break up and Europe enters the busiest travel period of the year, it is clear that EES is still not ready for peak summer volumes,” Ryanair’s chief operations officer Neal McMahon said in a statement.

“Passengers and families should not be used as guinea pigs for a half-baked passport control system that risks creating long queues, missed flights and unnecessary stress at airports this summer,” he said.

“It is as simple as postponing EES until September, as other EU countries like Greece have already done,” he added.

Meanwhile, Ryanair said today that its passenger numbers reached a new monthly high in June.

The airline said it carried a total of 21.2 million passengers in June, an increase of 7% on the same time last year.

The 21.2 million passenger numbers exceeded Ryanair’s previous record month of August 2025 when it carried 21 million passenger.

Ryanair operated over 116,800 flights in June.

Its load factor – how many seats it fills on each flight – was unchanged at 95%, the airline added.

Ryanair shares moved higher in Dublin trade today.