The Wait That Never Ends
Non-European passengers arriving at Brussels Airport last week found themselves in queues that stretched for five hours, a direct result of technical failures in the European Union's Entry/Exit System. The biometric border registration programme, meant to streamline checks for travellers from outside the Schengen Area, instead turned arrivals into an endurance test.
Brussels Airport confirmed the delays, which primarily affected passengers requiring passport control before entering Belgium. The airport attributed the congestion to IT problems that slowed the EES to a crawl during peak periods. For families connecting through Brussels, the consequences were immediate: missed flights, rebooking chaos, and hours standing in terminals.
The disruption adds to a growing list of operational failures since the system's launch. What was sold as modernisation has, in practice, become a recurring source of passenger frustration across European airports.
How a System Meant to Help Made Things Worse
The Entry/Exit System began its phased rollout in October 2025 and reached full operation across participating European borders in April 2026. It replaces manual passport stamps with electronic records that capture passport details, facial images, and fingerprints of non-EU nationals entering and leaving the Schengen Area.
The stated goals are sensible: identify visa overstayers, detect document fraud, and eventually speed up border crossings. Brussels Airport prepared extensively, installing 12 additional border control booths, equipping 33 booths with facial-recognition cameras, and deploying 61 self-service kiosks for pre-registration.
But preparation has not equalled performance. In February, an e-gate failure forced staff to revert to manual checks, creating 90-minute waits. By March, waiting times had reached two hours at departures and over three hours at arrivals. Nearly 600 passengers missed flights over a four-day span that month, according to the airport.
The latest five-hour queues suggest the system's vulnerabilities have not been resolved, despite months of warnings from industry groups.
A Policy Change That Backfired
Part of the problem stems from a shift in how non-European passengers are processed. Until April, travellers from certain countries, including the United States, could register through EES kiosks and then use automated gates to cross the border. That option has been removed.
Now, more passengers must pass through staffed border-control posts. When technical issues slow the EES, the result is a compounding bottleneck. Large groups of arriving passengers, all funnelled through a limited number of booths, create the kind of congestion that spirals quickly.
The change appears to contradict the system's original promise of efficiency. Instead of reducing reliance on manual processing, the current setup increases it, particularly when the technology falters.
Industry Warnings Proved Accurate
Aviation groups have been sounding alarms since before the system went live. In February, ACI EUROPE, Airlines for Europe, and the International Air Transport Association warned that EES could produce queues of four hours or more during busy periods. They cited insufficient staffing, technical problems with automated systems, and limited deployment of pre-registration tools as core concerns.
At a Brussels briefing on 3 September, IATA called for greater flexibility in implementing the system, arguing that airports should be allowed to partially suspend EES procedures when infrastructure cannot handle passenger volumes. The association outlined four conditions necessary for reliable operation: adequate staffing, stable hardware and software, functioning self-service kiosks and automated gates, and wider use of pre-registration tools.
Thomas Reynaert, IATA's Senior Vice President for External Affairs, said that waiting times of six hours were "certainly not an exaggeration" and noted that extreme cases had already occurred during the summer. The five-hour queues at Brussels Airport appear to validate those concerns.
The Timing Could Not Be Worse
The disruptions come as passenger traffic at Brussels Airport continues to climb. Around 5.2 million passengers were expected to pass through the airport during July and August alone, a four per cent increase compared to the same period in 2025.
Higher volumes magnify the impact of any system failure. A technical glitch that might cause minor delays during off-peak hours becomes a crisis when hundreds of passengers arrive within a short window. The EES, in its current state, does not appear equipped to handle that variability.
Brussels Airport has said it is working on structural solutions to the congestion, but specifics remain unclear. The airport's infrastructure investments suggest a willingness to adapt, but the underlying software and policy issues may be beyond its control.
What Modernisation Looks Like in Practice
The Entry/Exit System was designed to bring Europe's external borders into the digital age. In theory, biometric registration should make controls faster and more secure. In practice, the rollout has created a cascade of operational challenges that show no sign of abating nearly a year after launch.
The gap between intention and execution is widest for passengers caught in the queues. For them, modernisation looks like standing for hours in a terminal, watching departure times slip past, and hoping the next connection is not also lost to a system that was supposed to make travel easier.
Brussels Airport's experience is not isolated. Other European hubs have reported similar disruptions, suggesting the problems are systemic rather than local. Until the technical issues are resolved and policies adjusted, non-European travellers face the prospect of unpredictable and lengthy delays at Europe's borders.
