The Diplomat
The long queues at passport control at Madrid-Barajas Airport yesterday provoked a new clash between the Interior Ministry and the Airline Association (ALA).
ALA president Javier Gándara described as “completely unacceptable” the queues at passport controls this weekend at Barajas T4 and T1, due, he said, to the fact that there are not enough National Police officers in some time slots.
Gándara said that up to 1,000 people missed their connecting flights at Terminal 4, and that this number rises to 4,500 if we take into account so far in March. For this reason, he urged the Ministry of the Interior to make available the “necessary resources at all Spanish airports to meet the demand of tourists”, at the beginning of Easter and the summer season.
The ALA president indicated that tourists on intercontinental flights find it difficult to catch their stopovers on time due to the long queues at the controls and warned that “not long from now” the large influx of British passengers will begin, so he stated that “by then it will not only be a possible problem for Barajas, but for other tourist airports such as the Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Alicante or Malaga”.
Problems with passport controls at the Madrid airport occurred as early as June 2022. At that time, Iberia denounced the situation and the Ministry of the Interior, although it denied that there were “significant” delays, reinforced the police staff at Barajas by 500 agents.
Now, the department headed by Fernando Marlaska has responded to the new complaints, describing them as “hoaxes” by the companies to “hide their shame” due to their own lack of ground staff.
“It is a lie that is traditionally spread when there are two or three weeks to go before holidays such as Easter or the summer season,” said Interior sources. And Marlaska himself, when asked by journalists, replied: “The delays have not been due to a lack of personnel. There has not been any request or complaint regarding missed flights in circumstances that were motivated by the documentation control”.
According to Interior sources, last Sunday there was a concentration of passengers in Barajas “out of the ordinary” due to the fact that between 14.00 and 17.00 hours there were some flights arriving early, mainly from the American continent and, in turn, two delays of other flights.
Specifically, they indicated that there was a congestion of approximately 4,000 people in that time slot due to eleven flights with altered schedules from cities such as Lima, Dallas, Buenos Aires and Mexico, as well as Marrakech, Tangier and Casablanca. These queues, they said, are “very exceptional”.
Finally, they explained that these flight delays or advances altered the dynamics of border inspection, producing queues of passengers with a wait of around 50 minutes, a time which, they said, is acceptable in comparison with other international airports in similar situations.
According to Interior Ministry data, the number of police officers at Barajas was 362 in 2022 and this year it has increased to 451.
