Tens of thousands of British holidaymakers are bracing themselves for long queues at Palma airport’s passport control when they land this weekend. With the school holidays having started, Palma’s Son San Joan, which has been front page news in the UK because of the passport control chaos, is set to handle 622,362 passengers and 3,798 flights between this morning and Sunday night.
In total, the Balearics will be handling 945,000 holidaymakers, but the passport problem only appears to be happening in Palma, with British visitors having to wait for as along as two hours to get through the control.
Yesterday the SUP police union admitted that there is a problem at the airport but said that there are two principal causes. Firstly, the union blamed the EU for the border control rules introduced in April. "We didn’t invent the law, the EU did, in the best interests of the general public. But yes, the new rules and regulations are slowing the process down."
Secondly, the police union claims that too many flights from the UK are landing within the same window and that at peak times the strained National Police, which was cut by a third last year, has a great deal of trouble with handling and processing British passports. The police yesterday called for immediate action to be taken to prevent these long queues which could be avoided by installing more control booths as well as more of the ABC automatic scanners.
The National Police called on the airport authorities to check over flight paths and scedules and take some form of action to prevent so many flights from the UK landing at the same time. This is a tall order because of peak season; schedules would have been decided upon last year and changing thousands of flights would be a nightmare.