Ryanair has grounded its passengers twice in one week. The culprit has a first and last name: EES

For a plane to take off on time and end up leaving hundreds of passengers behind is something that does not happen often. However, it has already happened on several Ryanair flights in recent weeks, and the explanation, technically, has little to do with the airline really.

The new border system. The European Union has launched the Entry and Exit System (EES), a digital border control that forces non-EU citizens (including the British, since Brexit) to register their biometric data every time they cross a Schengen area border. That includes facial scanning and fingerprints.

The system began rolling out in October and was due to be fully operational in all Schengen countries from April 10. What no one calculated quite correctly is the time it would take to process each passenger at the controls.

What happened in Milan. On April 16, a Ryanair flight bound for Manchester took off from Bergamo airport, leaving behind a group of passengers still stuck in border control queues. According to counted one of those affected, Adam Hassanjee, 18, told the BBC, they had not moved in the queue for an hour and a half when they saw the plane leaving. He had to make a living on his own: first a flight to Malta, then to Leeds.

In parallel, to EasyJet something similar happened to him at Linate airport, also in Milan, where of the 156 passengers on a flight to Manchester only 34 boarded.

It has not been the only case. That same April 10, the date on which the EES was to be activated throughout the Schengen area, another Ryanair flight between Tenerife South and East Midlands, United Kingdom, also left passengers on the ground. Among them, according to reported BBC, a 42-year-old teacher, his wife and two-year-old son, who had to spend £1,600 finding an alternative route home because the next available Ryanair flight didn’t leave for a week.

Ryanair’s version: they didn’t leave anyone. The airline has rejected firmly the narrative that he “left passengers behind.” His argument goes through the fact that everyone who was at the gate when it closed flew away. Those who did not arrive on time simply missed their flight. They also explained that, once boarding is closed, the passenger manifest is legally signed and sent to the captain, from which point nothing can be done. The EES thing, according to the airline, is a border control problem, not theirs.

Punctuality. Technically, Ryanair may be right. But the image it conveys is that of an airline that prefers to leave on time, without dozens of passengers, rather than wait for a new, slow and technically problematic border control system to let its people through. It is not that it is illegal or unusual in the industry, but after the general chaos due to the implementation of the EES, there was a striking lack of communication to travelers. Peter Walker, the teacher who was stranded in Tenerife, counted to the media that at no time was there anyone from the airline to inform them or help them with options.

What Brussels says. The European Commission has defended that the EES “works very well” and that in the vast majority of countries there have been no incidents. He acknowledged, however, that in some member states technical problems were detected in the first days. Just like share According to the media, since it started in October, the system has recorded more than 56 million border crossings and has prevented the entry of 28,500 people, of which 700 were identified as a security threat.

Cover image | Niels Baars

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