One of Tenerife’s airports was plagued by long queues and overcrowding last week at both its departures and arrivals areas. Concerns have been raised among locals and tourists as the Canary Islands continue to test the EU’s new passport check system

Video footage, filmed at around 11am last Friday (November 21), reveals long lines of expectant passengers throughout large parts of the arrivals area of Tenerife South Airport (TFS) – the busier of the island’s two hubs, which primarily handles international flights. A dense crowd of travellers can be seen queueing for the new biometric passport process, which was implemented just under three weeks ago. Accompanying the video is a caption by the user, which reads: “Chaos at Tenerife South Airport today. Anyone travelling to the UK should prepare for passport-control queues!”

This comes during the early rollout of the EU’s new €1.3 billion (£1.1 billion) Entry/Exit System (EES), a system designed to automate the registration of non-Schengen travellers and eventually replace manual passport stamping. The EES system collects biometric data, including fingerprints and facial images, as well as passport information.

However, the rollout in Tenerife has already been plagued by issues. Just 24 hours after the software was deployed, a software glitch knocked out six of the 10 biometric kiosks in the arrivals hall, forcing officers to revert to manual processing, just as a large wave of UK flights was expected. Lines of more than 1,000 passengers snaked through the terminal, with some travellers reporting waits of up to two hours.

Spanish airport operator Aena confirmed that the outage stemmed from a firmware conflict between the kiosk cameras and the National Police fingerprint reader, an issue that had not appeared in pilot tests. According to VisaHQ, 17 cabin crew members missed connections to other flights, forcing airlines to rely on their reserves and incur overnight stay costs. There are also concerns that repeated failures could erode peak-season confidence for next year.

According to Spain’s Ministry of the Interior, implementation will be phased in until April 10, 2026, meaning automated checks will continue to run alongside the stamping system for several months yet. TFS activated EES on November 6, following the EU rollout on October 12, and authorities have warned that delays are likely during this initial period, especially at peak times.

Several airports across Spain have already implemented the new system, including Barcelona-El Prat on October 27, Alicante-Elche on November 1 and Palma de Mallorca on November 19.

Brits have been warned that crowding is particularly heavy when several UK flights arrive in quick succession – a longstanding issue that has affected Tenerife’s airports since Brexit classified British visitors as third-country nationals, despite the UK being one of Tenerife’s largest tourism markets.

Booking trends and visitor data suggest that hundreds of thousands of Brits visit Tenerife during November and December, with bookings for the last quarter of 2024 up 41% compared to the same period in 2023. The year before that, total UK visitors to Tenerife were over 2.5 million, according to Travel Gossip.

Both local authorities and the British Embassy have urged passengers, especially those flying to destinations outside the Schengen Area, to arrive at the airport earlier than usual to avoid missing flights during the adjustment period. The UK Foreign Office travel advice regarding the EES reads: “EES may take each passenger a few extra minutes to complete so be prepared to wait longer than usual at the border once the system starts.”