EUROPE’S biggest airline is calling for new European travel rules to be suspended.
Ryanair has written to the 29 countries where Europe‘s new Entry/Exit System (EES) is being enforced, to suspend the system until September following lengthy airport delays.
Follow The Sun’s award-winning travel team on Instagram and Tiktok for top holiday tips and inspiration @thesuntravel.
The budget airline’s COO Neal McMahon said: “Governments across Europe are attempting to roll out a half-baked IT system in the middle of the busiest travel season of the year, and passengers are paying the price, being forced to endure hours-long passport control queues and in some cases, missing flights.
“The solution is simple and already provided for under EU law (EU Reg. 2025/1534) – Governments should suspend EES until September when the peak summer travel season has subsided, just as Greece has done.
“This would allow passengers – many of whom are travelling with young families – a smoother airport experience for their summer holidays.”
Read more on travel inspo
It comes as the airline has called on the French government to suspend the rollout of EES to ensure passengers do not suffer long queues at airports during the summer period.
According to the airline, despite French authorities knowing that EES was going to be introduced on April 10 this year for the past three years, they have “failed to ensure adequate staffing, system readiness or kiosks are in place”.
This has meant that there are long queues at passport control and in some cases, passengers are even missing their flights.
For example at Beauvais, Marseille and Nantes airports, queues are taking around one to two hours for passengers to get through.
Other European countries are also suffering, with Sun Travel Reporter Alice Penwill recently getting stuck at Lanzarote Airport in Spain for three hours.
Other reports have seen two-hour queues at Lisbon Airport in Portugal and in Malta, one flight was forced to wait on the tarmac for 40 minutes before passengers could get off, as passport control queues in the airport were so long.
Greece, on the other hand, has suspended EES until September, to manage peak summer travel.
