Two Aer Lingus flights were delayed as a result of the boiling backlog.
In comments to The Portugal News, the Irish flag-carrier confirmed “Aer Lingus flight EI499 Faro-Dublin and flight EI899 Faro-Cork experienced some delays on Sunday 6 May due to Passport Control at Faro airport.
“Both flights landed within less than 30 minutes beyond their scheduled arrival. We apologise for the inconvenience caused to guests impacted by these delays which were due to circumstances beyond our control.”
Irish TV and radio presenter Brenda Donohue, who works for Ireland’s national broadcaster RTÉ, was caught up in the mayhem and tweeted about the “unbelievable scenes.”
Speaking to the Irish Times, Donohue, who was stuck in the middle of the throng, said she had “never experienced anything like it”.
“It looks like passport control operators have gone on a lightening strike. Safety issues here as hundreds are in a cramped queue for one guy to check all the passports! No security, no air conditioning and no explanation”, she tweeted.
Others took to the micro-blogging site to deem the situation “beyond ridiculous” and “disgraceful”.
The uncomfortable scenes of an “overcrowded” and “boiling” concourse tightly packed with hundreds of passengers and allegedly without any air conditioning, have lead to many querying whether this type of situation could reoccur more frequently with the onset of the busy summer season.
Answering queries posed by The Portugal News, Portugal’s immigration and borders control authority SEF, which oversees airport passport control, said waiting times associated with border control at Faro Airport “are normally below 10 minutes”.
“At times, there is a greater flow of passengers in arrivals, because several airplanes land in short periods of time. SEF has responded accordingly to these types of situations with a careful management of personnel to fulfil to all the competencies for which SEF is responsible”, the authority explained.
Regarding Sunday’s scenes at Faro Airport, SEF said “the situation reported reflects a unique episode, restricted to a time period between 7.40pm and 9pm on May 6.
“A great influx was registered in the airport structure during that time (19 flights landed, which corresponds to more than 6,000 passengers to control in the space of one and a half hours) and SEF responded by adopting measures that allowed the regularisation of the flow of passengers to be controlled in half an hour. By around 9.30pm., the embarkation and disembarkation areas had a normalised flow of passengers”.
Faro airport director Alberto Mota Borges said: “This is a one-off situation that should not be generalised.
“The problem occurred within a specific time (one and a half hours) where a peak of traffic coincided with a period in which, for operational reasons, SEF had a lower availability of human resources, thereby causing a reduction in the capacity of point source control”.
Mota Borges stressed that SEF’s policy structures “immediately activated the control measures provided for in the Convention on the Application of Schengen Agreements”, and that within half hour “normality both in arrivals and departures” was restored.
He said the Algarve airport works closely with SEF and maintains good relations and a good level of service.
“Team planning is done in advance to meet the estimated number of passengers, and there is no reason to say that it is a structural problem.
“ANA Aeroportos de Portugal [the national airport management company] will do everything with SEF so that, in the context of good relations with this entity, a good level of service is maintained for passengers, and that the situation is not repeated”, he pledged.