It becomes your responsibility to allow enough time to get through the queues.
A new European digital border system, designed to register the fingerprints and photographs of arriving travellers, has introduced an unfamiliar friction into the ancient rhythm of summer migration. What takes moments per person becomes something else entirely when multiplied across thousands of holidaymakers moving through the same terminals on the same days. The system is not going away, and neither is the summer — so the burden of adaptation falls, as it often does, on the individual traveller, who must now plan not just for the journey, but for the queue that precedes it.
- Europe's new Entry/Exit System is turning routine border crossings into hour-long ordeals, with some travellers missing flights entirely and paying hundreds of pounds for the privilege.
- One family's ninety-minute wait in Rome cost them £250 in replacement tickets — money that no airline, and almost certainly no insurer, will return to them.
- Airlines are urging passengers to arrive three hours early, but the advice is not uniform — some ports warn that arriving too soon can worsen the very congestion travellers are trying to escape.
- Travel insurance offers little shelter here: insurers classify border checks as routine procedures, meaning EES-related missed departures fall squarely outside standard coverage.
- The clearest path through the disruption is unglamorous but effective — contact your carrier directly, download their app, and build the queue into your journey before you leave home.
Europe's airports are facing a new kind of congestion this summer — not from record passenger numbers, but from a digital border control system called the Entry/Exit System, or EES. Every traveller arriving at a European airport must now register fingerprints and a photograph alongside their passport scan. The procedure is brief in isolation, but across thousands of summer travellers it creates bottlenecks that have already stretched into waits of an hour or more, compounded at some airports by technical failures.
The human cost is already visible. Anne Robinson and her teenage son Jack found themselves in a ninety-minute queue in Rome in June, only to reach the front and discover their flight home had departed without them. Replacement tickets cost the family £250 — an expense they could not recover from the airline or their insurer.
The guidance from carriers is broadly consistent, if not perfectly uniform. Wizz Air, Jet2, and Ryanair all recommend arriving three hours before departure at European airports. Eurostar has absorbed EES processing into its own schedule and advises passengers to follow their ticket times. Dover, where technical problems have delayed EES deployment entirely, warns against arriving more than two hours early, cautioning that excess early arrivals can worsen congestion rather than ease it. The practical takeaway: check directly with your operator before travelling.
Beyond timing, staying connected matters. Airlines' apps now push real-time alerts on wait times and schedule changes, and the Civil Aviation Authority recommends signing up for both text and email notifications — and checking that those emails aren't quietly landing in a junk folder.
The most sobering reality may be the insurance gap. The Association of British Insurers confirms that no current policies explicitly cover EES-related delays, since border procedures are treated as routine and foreseeable rather than unexpected events. A claim under missed departure or delay coverage is theoretically possible, but immigration delays are frequently excluded outright. The financial risk of an EES queue, in other words, belongs to the traveller. As the summer peak approaches, the message is plain: the queues are real, the costs are personal, and preparation is the only reliable buffer.
Europe's airports are about to get crowded in ways that have nothing to do with summer holiday demand. The European Union has rolled out a new digital border control system called the Entry/Exit System, or EES, and it is already creating the kind of queues that make people miss their flights—and then pay hundreds of pounds to catch the next one.
The system itself is straightforward enough. When you arrive at a European airport, you now have to register your fingerprints and provide a photograph as your passport is scanned. It's a routine security procedure, the kind of thing that takes a few minutes per person. But when you multiply that by thousands of summer travellers moving through the same airport on the same day, a few minutes becomes a bottleneck. Some airports have experienced technical glitches on top of the procedural delays, making the wait even longer. The result: holidaymakers standing in lines that stretch for an hour or more, watching their departure time creep closer, and sometimes missing their flight altogether.
Anne Robinson and her thirteen-year-old son Jack learned this lesson the hard way in June when they were trying to get home from Rome. They found themselves trapped in a ninety-minute queue at the airport. By the time they reached the front, their flight had already departed. They had no choice but to buy replacement tickets for two days later, at a cost of £250—money they could not recover.
The practical advice from airlines and travel experts is clear, though it requires some nuance. Wizz Air's UK leadership has told the BBC that British travellers should plan to arrive at European airports three hours before their flight home. Jet2 and Ryanair have issued similar guidance, though the exact timing can vary depending on which airport you're using. Eurostar, by contrast, suggests sticking to the arrival time printed on your ticket, since the rail service has already factored EES processing into its schedule. At the Port of Dover, where technology problems have prevented the new system from being deployed at all, officials are advising passengers to arrive no more than two hours before their ferry departs—and they're warning that showing up too early can actually make congestion worse. The lesson is simple: call your airline, ferry operator, or rail company before you travel and ask what they recommend. Then add travel time from home on top of that.
Staying informed is the second line of defence. Most airlines now have apps that send real-time alerts about waiting times and any disruptions to schedules. The Civil Aviation Authority recommends downloading these in advance and making sure you're signed up to receive text messages and emails. It's worth checking that notification emails aren't being filtered into your junk folder—a small oversight that could leave you unaware of delays until you're already at the airport.
The third piece of advice is perhaps the most sobering: read your insurance policy carefully, and understand what it will and will not cover. If you miss your flight because of EES queues, the airline has no obligation to book you on another flight without charging you again. Travel insurance is unlikely to help. The Association of British Insurers confirms that no policies explicitly cover delays caused by the Entry/Exit System, because border checks are considered a routine, expected procedure rather than an unexpected event. Anna-Marie Duthie, a travel insurance expert at the analytics firm Defaqto, explains that there is a theoretical possibility of claiming under missed departure or delay coverage, but immigration and border delays are often specifically excluded from what insurers will pay for. In practice, she says, it becomes your responsibility to allow enough time to get through the queues. The £250 that Anne Robinson paid for her replacement flight came out of her own pocket.
As summer travel season approaches, the message is consistent: plan ahead, stay alert, and don't assume that insurance will catch you if something goes wrong. The EES is here, the queues are real, and the cost of being unprepared is measured in both time and money.
Notable Quotes
In practice it is your responsibility to allow additional time for such long queues or delays— Anna-Marie Duthie, travel insurance expert at Defaqto
British holidaymakers should arrive at European airports three hours before their flight home departs— Wizz Air UK leadership
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why is this system causing such disruption now, when it's been planned for years?
The EU designed it carefully, but the gap between planning and reality is always wide. Thousands of people moving through the same checkpoint at the same time, some technical hiccups, staff learning the process—it compounds quickly. And travellers aren't used to it yet. They're arriving at the same time they always have, not accounting for something new.
So the real problem is that people are underestimating how long it takes?
Partly that, yes. But also that the system itself is slower than the old way. A fingerprint scan and photo take time. Multiply that by everyone in the queue, and you get a real delay. It's not just about traveller behaviour.
Why won't insurance cover this? It seems like a legitimate travel disruption.
Because it's not unexpected. Insurance covers accidents, emergencies, things that go wrong. Border checks are routine. They're part of the journey. The insurers see it as something you should have planned for, not something that happened to you.
That feels unfair to the person who loses £250.
It does. But that's the logic of how insurance works. You're supposed to build the risk into your planning. Arrive early. Check with your airline. Don't rely on insurance to bail you out.
What happens if this doesn't improve by next summer?
Then travellers will adapt. They'll arrive earlier as standard. Airlines might adjust their schedules. The system might get faster as staff get better at it. Or the EU might make changes. But for now, this summer, people need to treat it as a real constraint on their time.