ZaventemIn Brussels Airport, travelers queued for hours at passport control this afternoon. By now, the rows would have been resolved.
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Casandra Look, Robby Dierickx
Latest update:
16:29
Specifically, it concerns arriving flights that are located outside the Schengen zone. This is reported by the spokesperson for Brussels Airport. Before travelers can leave the airport, they must have their passports checked. This check takes place before the baggage hall.
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“It is a distressing intention,” says one of the travelers. He had taken a flight from London and had to wait another hour on arrival. “I heard from people around me that they had been in a traffic jam for three hours. In the meantime, the employees of Brussels Airport have already handed out water to the people who were standing in line, so you know it’s bad.”
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No communication
“What I couldn’t understand is that they didn’t even let women and children come first. Next to me was a woman with a small child in her arms and an older woman with a cane,” the man continues. “Of course the communication was also very bad. Although the police were friendly, we were absolutely not informed. We had no idea how long it would take or why there was such a delay.”
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“Brussels Airport urgently needs to organize itself better,” it sounds. “Imagine arriving as an international traveler and experiencing this. You may still hang so many panels with “Welcome to Belgium”, but this is not an advertisement for our country.”
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Many flights
The spokeswoman for Brussels Airport, Nathalie Pierard, says that the situation there has now returned to normal. “For two hours there have been longer queues than usual as there were many arriving flights from non-Schengen countries. More specifically, six flights landed between 1 and 2 am. Normally, however, that number of flights is not a problem. It is at the passport control itself that there was a delay, but that is a competence of the federal police. I don’t know what the problem was there.” We tried to contact the federal police for an answer but were unable to reach anyone.
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“It is very rare that such traffic jams arise, especially now that there are fewer flights due to the corona crisis,” Pierard continues. “And when it does, we’ll have a pool of volunteers that we’re calling on to help. These are our employees who can come from all departments. They then help organize the traffic jams or support the staff in the baggage hall. They also try to inform the people who are waiting, unfortunately that is sometimes not enough. But of course they are not allowed to help with customs or passport control.”
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