Growing unease about Malaga Airport passport check queues: 'Some people have been waiting for more than two hours'

Passengers at Malaga Airport are expressing growing unease as they experience the transition to the new European passport verification system. Ever since SUR reported the first queues at the start of November, the newspaper has been receiving complaints, mainly from passengers travelling to or from the UK, although not exclusively. The same concerns are repeated in all reports: queues of an hour or more to pass through the passport check, staff shortages and machines out of service.

One of the complaints was that of a regular passenger who asked to be identified as Juan M. As a manager of a big company with several offices in Spain, he often has to travel for work, in addition to the leisure trips he books. A recent trip to Vietnam left a sour taste. He left in October and his trip included a stopover at Istanbul airport, where he was impressed with the clear signage and smoothly flowing queues.

"On the way there, I saw the e-gates at passport control in Malaga, which were not working properly. Almost all of them were red and only a couple were green, but even they didn't work when I tried to scan my passport. There was no one there to indicate that they were out of order, so those of us who happened to be there wasted time trying. Even so, at that time, there were no queues and I was able to go through manual control without any problem," he said.

His return to Malaga in early November was much worse. "I arrived in Malaga around 11.40am, after another stopover in Istanbul, and the situation at passport control was chaotic: the e-gates were still out of service, there were only a few operational police posts, the entry flow was periodically cut off and there were no staff reporting," he said.

"A lot of European passengers ended up in the 'None EU' queue because of a lack of signage. It took me about 60 minutes to get out, but some were there for up to two hours. In addition, many tourists asked security staff what was going on, just to be told 'I don't speak English', which added to the general frustration," the regular passenger said.

The situation did not exactly improve at baggage reclaim, where "suitcases were piled up on the belts and on the floor, with no order and no staff organising them". Juan M. said that he couldn't get his suitcase for an hour because of a conveyor belt breakdown.

These delays had an impact not only on passengers. "There were many taxi drivers and transport companies waiting for up to two hours to pick up their passengers, with the consequent economic loss," Juan M. said.

Juan M. said that, of all the stopovers he had made, the worst was the one in Malaga. "Istanbul IST seemed impeccable to me: clear signage, flowing queues, self-delivery of luggage and very organised controls. In Vietnam, I went through Hanoi Nội Bài, Ho Chi Minh Tân Sơn Nhất and Phú Quoc and none of them had anything similar to what happened in Malaga."

"With the capacity and resources we have, it is surprising to see this lack of control, lack of staff and lack of foresight. I left in October with the e-gates not working. I came back in November and they were still not working," he said. Juan M. believes that "something must be wrong with the infrastructure" if there are such issues, considering that the airport's management is aware of the number of flights and passengers. "It is unacceptable that Malaga Airport, with the number of passengers it receives each year, projects this image to the outside world," this passenger said.

In response, a spokesperson for the sub-delegation of the government, which is the administration responsible for the migration to the European passport control system, said that the implementation is happening "with absolute normality on practically all days, which does not prevent some incidents from occurring at certain times". "The new system, which is progressively implemented, will improve passenger traffic and security," this authority said.