Passport control and EES made me miss my flight – I had to pay over £1,000

A family of three’s dream trip to Disneyland Paris turned into a nightmare when lengthy queues at passport control and additional delays due to the new EU border biometric checks meant they missed their flight and were hit with a bill in excess of £1,000. Brad Short, from Middlesbrough, said he, his wife and their six-year-old daughter had arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris three-and-a-half hours before their easyJet flight on 16 April and were among the first to check-in. However, the 46-year-old primary school sports coach said they spent almost seven hours effectively stranded in the Paris airport before they were left with no choice but to foot the bill for another night in the French capital. “We were there for a four nights’ stay. On the way out: no issues, no problems, fantastic time with the little’un. Obviously on the way back, that’s when the nightmare started,” Short told The i Paper. Despite a “fairly quick” security clearance and heading to passport control “about a good hour earlier than we should have done”, Short said the queue did not move for around 45 minutes at first. “We physically didn’t move, and there were five, possibly six people who made it, who’d actually gone through,” he said. ‘People got irate’ Although only three booths were initially open, Short said one was later closed leaving just two, with passengers in the line for the closed queue directed to line up in front of them. “At this point, obviously a lot of people started to get a bit irate, a bit angry,” he said. EES was officially launched on 10 April. Under the system all non-EU citizens heading to the Schengen Area no longer receive manual passport stamps. Instead, travellers are required to provide their fingerprints and a photo of their face to prevent them from staying in the Schengen countries for more than 90 days in any 180-day period. Brad Short said his six-year-old daughter was not even offered a drink of water after they were stuck in the airport for hours after missing their flight home Short added that at one point there was only one passport control staff member for the queue of around 150 people. When the family eventually made it to the European Entry/Exit System (EES) registration line they were there for around 14 minutes, and had to watch as their flight took off. Although EES is fully operational at Charles de Gaulle, border police stagger the usage of kiosks and biometric gates based on real time congestion. In many airports the introduction has been hit by IT issues and staff shortages. ‘We watched our plane take off’ “Literally by the time we were there, our flight was due to be taking off. All this time, we were actually being told: ‘the plane are aware, it’s being held’ – all this, that and the other,” Short added. But by the time the trio made it the gate, their plane was pulling away. “If it wasn’t for the EES, we would have been on the plane for an hour before it took off,” Short said. “It was very poorly organised.” Many passengers have complained of long waits due to EES. Some countries have temporarily suspended EES to prevent huge queues and missed flights, while Greece has paused the checks for UK travellers until September. Short spoke to staff at the gate who confirmed the flight had left. But he said he later spoke to easyJet and was told their records only showed the family did not show up at the gate. By the time they finally left the airport it was around 8.30pm. They had spent six-and-a-half hours there after missing their flight, around four of which were spent trying to get help. “We were in the airport for six and a half hours with our little girl with absolutely no help,” Short said. “She wasn’t even offered a drink of a bottle of water. Nothing.” Over £1,000 spent on new tickets and a hotel The following day Short said the family arrived five hours early and waited over an hour until check-in opened. They passed through passport control on this occasion with ease, and were not held up by EES. But he said this was not the case for passengers who arrived later on, with one fellow flyer telling Short he and his family had to run to catch their flight as EES registration was in place when the airport got busier. In total, the missed flight cost the family around £1,300, covering their new plane tickets, an additional night’s stay in a hotel, taxis to and from the airport, a train from Leeds to Manchester airport, where their car was parked, and an additional day’s parking. Their original holiday to Disneyland Paris, including tickets to the amusement park, cost £1,500. “We paid nearly as much to get home.” Because travel insurance did not cover the missed flight, Short was not able to recoup any of the extra costs. He said easyJet staff blamed the family for missing the flight and were “absolutely no help”. The experience has cast a shadow over the family’s trip, which they had planned to recreate for their daughter’s next milestone birthday. Short said: “We were talking about [going] back for her 10th birthday. When we eventually made it to a hotel on the night in question, we were like, ‘we will never go back again’. We’ll never go back to Disney, and we will never go back to France because of how we were treated at the airport… I will never set foot on an easyJet plane again.” An easyJet spokesperson said: “The issues that Mr Short and his family experienced at passport control due to European Entry/Exit System checks (EES), which meant they were unable to make their flight, are unacceptable and we continue to urge border authorities to make full and effective use of the permitted flexibilities for as long as needed while EES is implemented, to avoid these delays for our customers. “While this was outside of our control, we are sorry for their experience and we will be looking into their feedback with our ground handling provider at Charles de Gaulle airport as this is not the level of service we expect for our customers.”