Airfield, which has been asking Interior for more agents in filters since October, warns of collapse of heat gates

Tourism could face an air collapse at the door of what is expected to be a recovery after a two-year pandemic, expected to be a record heat in arrivals of travelers. Staff shortages have been known to cause problems for weeks at some airports, as in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the two main air connection points. The problem in Spain is under border control, Because of the lack of police. 80% of the international tourists who visit us arrive by plane, which gives an idea of ​​the problem.

Some airlines, especially British ones, have had to cancel hundreds of flights in recent months because they do not have enough staff to operate them. The United Kingdom had no ERTE figures during the pandemic, which meant that many companies had to lay off part of the workforce. For example, British Airways cut more than 10,000 people. now they find that Difficulty recruiting employees,

Last week there were significant delays and even flight cancellations at some of the main European airports in London, Heathrow, and Schiphol in Amsterdam, the world’s third busiest international airport. In another, the shortage of personnel is such that the flag carrier, KLM, had to suspend the sale of tickets for outbound flights as it could not guarantee the services.

The problem in Spain is another. The Association of Air Lines, ALA, which brings together more than 80 operating airlines, has been warning for months Need to increase the number of border controls, to facilitate flow. The rapid recovery in international tourism over the past two months, coupled with the fact that this is the first summer since Brexit, is breaking these filters. British tourists will now have to go through passport control, something they did not have to do before the pandemic.

this Monday Iberia launched the T4 . Condemned the chaos in the passport control area of ​​the terminal De Barajas forced to delay the departure of some of his flights. Notably, those bound for Buenos Aires, Chicago and Miami flew late, waiting for stranded passengers at police checkpoints.

missed flights

According to Iberia, about 15,000 commuters have lost their connections since March 1 due to overcrowding in the police containment zone. The ALA had already in December condemned that more than 5,000 people had lost their flight last month due to delays in border controls in Barajas. It affected 3,000 passengers over Easter. Apart from Madrid airport, which has the most traffic, They condemn problems in other very touristic peoples like Málaga, Alicante, Málaga, Seville, Ibiza, Tenerife Sur or Seville.

Airlines have warned that this could go further now that the government has decided to allow passengers from third countries to arrive not only with a vaccination certificate, but also with an antigen, which is our main issuing market. Will facilitate the arrival of British tourists.

“This will make the police force more important at airport border control to avoid unwanted queues,” says ALA president Javier Gandara. They ask that, exceptionally, as Portugal has done, these citizens are given the automatic passport control used by the rest of the world. The machines should be allowed to be used by community commuters and thus be able to reduce the filter and avoid queues.

Passport control depends on the interior ministry, in which the ALA has already sent several letters condemning the problem. They recall that airport manager AENA has increased its staff, as has AENA, which already has more air traffic controllers than before the pandemic. “While it is clear that what happens in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands affects us, what affects us We’ve all done our homework except InterioR”.