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EES and Faro airport wait times

EES and Faro airport wait times. Anibody land at Faro? What kind of wait times should you expect with EES?

Posted by
9608 posts

What is your itinerary? Are you sure you will do immigration in Faro?

If so, your advantage maybe will be that it is a small airport, so there will be no lines of hundreds of people. Of course, smaller airport means less staff to deal with surges in volume...so who knows. The EES process really adds little more time in theory, but in some cases people are having problems with the new system, the systems themselves still a little wonky, and maybe some redundant processing.

Posted by
13892 posts

A lot will depend on whether you are in row 7 or row 35, and what other flights from non Schengen points ( e.g. UK)
may have arrived just ahead of yours.

Posted by
2090 posts

I have been seeing a number of reports of long wait times to go through passport control in Faro. In Lisbon and several other European countries, too. This new EES has created huge backups when a number of international planes land in a short time frame. As the other poster noted, Faro has a large number of UK flights, which all have to do passport control since Brexit.

It really depends on how many other international flights are arriving at the same time.

If you really want to dig into it, you could look at arrivals on the day and time you arrive to get some type of idea.

There is also a Travel To Europe app you can complete before arrival that purports to help.

Posted by
2335 posts

“ Faro has a large number of UK flights, which all have to do passport control since Brexit.”

Even before Brexit, UK citizens had to go through passport control upon arrival in Portugal. This is because while the UK was an EU member, they were never part of the Schengen Zone. What has changed since Brexit is that UK passport holders can no longer use the separate line for EU citizens. And since the start of EES, they also have to register for that.

Posted by
3 posts

Do you have to go throught ESS on arrival and departure ? How long ahead of my flight do I need to be for a departure from Faro ? Or Lisbone ?

Posted by
2090 posts

Dutch Traveler - I stand corrected. I had actually forgotten having to do passport control to go to Scotland long before Brexit.