Overview
- An easyJet flight from Milan Linate to Manchester left Sunday with 27 of 148 booked passengers after hours-long passport checks tied to the EU’s new Entry/Exit System.
- EES, fully activated on April 10, replaces passport stamps with biometric registration, yet IT failures in Italy forced officers to switch to manual checks that created long queues.
- Passengers described waits of up to three hours in hot terminals, with reports of people vomiting or nearly fainting and families paying for last‑minute lodging and alternate flights.
- EasyJet delayed departure by about an hour, cited crew duty-time limits for leaving without many customers, apologized, said it had warned travelers to allow extra time, and offered free rebooking.
- Border checkpoints fall under national interior ministries, not airports or airlines, and ACI Europe had warned of rollout disruption, with a similar March incident in Lanzarote leaving about 89 Ryanair passengers behind.