Passport queues vex airlines

WHEN weary travellers step off a long flight, they want to get off the plane and on to their destinations as quickly as possible. But getting out of the airport is becoming much more taxing for visitors to America and Europe because of lengthening queues for passport control. Not only are passengers getting fed up; airlines and many airports are, too.

On August 13th Virgin Atlantic grumpily published data showing that Heathrow hit its target for processing more than 95% of non-EEA passengers within 45 minutes on only one day in July, with some waiting up to 156 minutes. It is not just a blip. Queues at Heathrow, Europe’s biggest airport, have been growing since 2015 (see chart). In Europe’s Schengen passport area, they have grown since more thorough checks were introduced last year owing to the migrant crisis. Queues have also increased in America, where travellers in Boston, New York and Miami often find themselves waiting in line for over three hours.

Airlines and airports are starting to worry that the queues could discourage flying for business. Austerity is a primary cause of the waits, according to Andrew Charlton of Aviation Advocacy, a research firm based in Geneva. Since the 2007-09 financial crisis, air traffic has increased and budgets for passport controllers have been slashed. The number of passengers going through Britain’s airports has risen by a quarter since 2012, for example, but its border force’s budget has fallen by a tenth. America’s international passenger numbers have risen three times faster than its border-patrol budget in the same period.

The plea from airlines and airports is for governments to spend more on manning passport kiosks. John Holland-Kaye, chief executive of Heathrow Airport (whose chairman, Paul Deighton, is also chairman of The Economist Group), has argued that more international passengers should be allowed to use automated passenger kiosks to speed up processing. But his advisers doubt if either solution is politically feasible. Taxpayers are more interested in smoothing entry for themselves than for foreigners. Earlier this month, for example, Britain’s government was trumpeting plans for special lanes for British citizens after Brexit, which would doubtless worsen queues for everyone else.

Airports are not helpless. In 2014 Dallas-Forth Worth airport in Texas paid for extra automatic passport gates to slash queue sizes. That helped it to win an award from Airport Council International, a trade body that represents the world’s airports, for the greatest customer satisfaction of any large airport in North America. And airlines around the world often pay a small sum per passenger to speed business-class customers through special passport-control lanes. Many governments would gladly shift the cost of passport checks. Too gladly, reckon some airports, who fear the entire bill for passport control may eventually be dumped on them.