Returning home from a July holiday at Lake Como, in Italy, Taylor Henriksen, 25, had a layover in Brussels, where she waited in line for around two and a half hours to get through passport control.
She missed her connecting flight to Washington, D.C.
“They were handing out Biscoff cookies and lollipops,” she said. “It made it worse, honestly. I was like, don’t even do that.”
Some people were “borderline in tears,” saying that they needed to get home to their families, but that the airport staff would not allow them to cut the line. She said one worker, rather than offering solutions, was “just saying, ‘Want a cookie? Want a cookie?’”
Alexander Zinell, the chief executive of Fraport Greece, which runs airports around the country, including on the islands of Corfu and Mykonos, said that customers have at times lined up out the doors before reaching border control.
Some authorities blame glitches in the technology itself — issues have been reported with both the vendors implementing the process and the European Union’s central technology. Kiosks are meant to collect the biometric images without needing border control officers to do it, but in many airports, the machines either do not work or haven’t been activated. Daniel Bunn, an American, said that was the case when he flew to Brussels on business in April.