European airport chaos as Brits are caught up in hours-long queues spilling into carparks

Airports across Europe have been hit with massive queues, with some travel hubs seeing long lines snaking out their front entrances. 

The continent recently introduced new border rules that one airport boss said has nearly tripled the amount of time it takes Britons to get through passport control. 

Footage taken from Corfu Airport and shared to social media showed a long line of disgruntled flyers waiting on the pavement outside the airport. 

One woman was seen fanning herself to fight off the hot weather. 

The clip then cuts to inside the airport, before passport control, where the queue has all but come to a standstill.

The footage was shared by a social media user, who wrote: 'Still queuing outside Corfu Airport with just over an hour to go til [sic] my flight sets off.' 

In a video taken in Faro Airport in Portugal yesterday morning, a vast queue had formed ahead of passport control, with few in the line looking happy. 

The clip was shared with the caption: 'If you are travelling today, be prepared.' 

Over in Montenegro's Tivat Airport, large lines were seen outside the travel hub, while the inside saw a huge mass of people waiting to check their bags in. 

The caption for the video read: 'Tivat Airport is not for the weak...'

And at Greece's Kos Airport there were scenes of chaos as countless people were trying to get on their planes home.  

A woman shared her experience on TikTok, highlighting a massive queue through duty free.  

Showing the time on her watch, which read 1.04pm, she wrote: 'We'd already been in the queue from 12.30.'

She then showed a clip of more dense queues, before cutting to a second shot of her watch, which this time read 1.55pm, adding: 'We got through just after 2pm.'

Earlier this week, Ivan Bassato - the head of aviation at Rome's Fiumicino airport - told the BBC that the EU's new Entry Exit System (EES) had driven up the average time it takes for Britons to get through airport security from seven to 20 minutes. 

He said: 'We are not at the point where you have the same quality of the process [as] before the EES.'

He added that his airport has found it impractical to have large numbers of passengers using the self-service kiosks, despite their £10.2million cost. 

Portugal's Faro Airport added that the technology driving the EES suffered from bugs, though insisted that any queues would quickly go down. 

Superintendent Pedro Oliveira, who is in charge of border control at Faro airport, said: 'Sometimes what used to be a 10-minute queue... takes over 30 minutes.'