MONTREAL — Fed up with all the border control delays at European airports, IATA and several other travel organizations are calling on the European Council of Ministers to address the travel industry’s concerns, saying more resources are “urgently needed” to reduce delays.

Delays were especially bad this summer, with some passengers waiting in lines for four hours or more at some European airports. IATA together with the European associations Airlines for Europe (A4E), Airlines Council International (ACI) Europe, European Regional Airlines (ERA) Association and Airlines International Representation in Europe (AIRE) have written to the European Council of Ministers to express their concerns about the issue.

“The imposition of a new regulation on border control checks by the European Union (regulation 458/2017) has caused chaos and significant delays to flights in Europe,” says IATA. The extra checks mean on average an extra 20 seconds processing time per passenger, meaning it can take an extra hour to process the passengers on a typical flight.

“We support additional border checks if governments believe this improves the security of Europe’s citizens,” says Rafael Schvartzman, IATA Regional Vice President, Europe. “But we warned this needed more resources to prevent delays, and governments have failed to heed those warnings.

“The number of delayed flights due to border control issues is up 97%. This is totally unacceptable. The answer is for more border control officers to be deployed, and more automatic gates to be operational.”