Passport Control at Alicante Aiprort

[BeachLife]

Please be aware - especially if you are in the habit of phoning your lift up or off site car storage contractor as you exit the plane.

AENA have had the "brainwave" of installing a bank of passport "chip" readers similar to that used in the UK at numerous airport border / passport control areas. Only trouble is the have no hope at all of coping with one plane load of people let alone two or three that can arrive at the same time.

It was pandemonium on Friday  - they are so slow, often cant read the chip and full of teething troubles. The queue was huge and despite there being a couple of bored looking Policia Local in the booths with no one waiting - every passport was looked at by the jobsworth and f you had a chipped document you HAD to use the scanner.

I reckon the people at the back of our flights queue would have taken over 40 mins to get through.

Not a great start to some peoples holiday

[Aficionado]

..and if you then have to queue up at a car hire desk for another hour or more - are they trying to put us off Alicante? 

Last year I flew into EMA from ALC, the chip readers there were optional, some used them and others didn't, to my mind it wasn't any quicker.

[BeachLife]

EMA was horrible on return and honestly if I had known the flight schedules I might not have booked my flight home into there on Sunday night.

Being a bit of a anorak with flights I looked on EMA arrivals page and they had 9 return flights scheduled in between 23:00 and 23:40 on Sunday night just gone and could have  predicated the trouble .

Most of them Ryanair (6 out of 9) and all offstand needing a bus to get to passport control. Our 22:00 out of ALC was 15 mins early back but made no difference as when we taxied to the stand the FR flight that had just landed before us was just starting to offload its passengers onto the only two Cobus buses in action there. So had to wait 30 mins to get off the plane

By the time we got to passport control the queue was out the hall back onto the ramp. Took 80 mins to get through.

Stupid scheduling into a arrivals area that cant cope

[Tony Gillam]

Passport checks at ALC?  That's novel.

[Spurs]

Anyone been through in the last few days I was wondering if there were massive queues or had it all died down a bit ?

[George Allen]

Came through Monday night at 20:00. No queues just a cursory glance at the passport by a  policeman.

[Spurs]

Thanks George out next week just wondering if I had to allow extra time

[Ash]

Rich/Sue

It will really depend on how many flights come in at once

When my flight lands it's the only one,am always 1st off so no complaints from me

But I will say the machines are painfully slow

X


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[bertdove]

Came in at 12.30 am.  Only flight then, but just policemen who only glanced at passports, through in two minutes.  Good luck!


Bert

[John H]

Came in last night, as bertdove says, just two policeman giving passports a cursory scan
It was the 45 minute queue at the car hire desk that narked me

Regards all

John


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[puddy-woo]

Oh really??   I always use xtra car hire as cant stand to queue but last few trips the cars have been pretty shite.  Was thinking of giving Record a go but maybe not now. Only coming over for 4 days so don't want to waste 1 minute of my valuable GA time.


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[John H]

It's unusual puffy-woo, I can't remember when I last had more than a five minute wait........still what's 45 minutes when we are here for 5 weeks 🏼️

Regards all

John


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[puddy-woo]

Lucky you (and less of the puffy!!!)


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[John H]

Sorry puffy, predictive text

Regards all

John


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[Spurs]

I hope it's not 45 mins next week when I come out or they can keep the car and I'll jump a taxi !!!!