The lack of personnel at the border control of the César Manrique Airport has once again caused at least 66 passengers to be unable to travel. In this case, the affected flight was the Ryanair flight that took off this Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. from the island with destination to Knock, Ireland.
One of the main problems is "the lack of Aena infrastructure at the Lanzarote Airport itself because there is no space enabled and specific for the border control service." This slows down boarding and causes this type of inconvenience.
According to the complaint filed by an agent of the National Police where the deficiencies in the control of foreign travelers upon arrival and departure from Lanzarote are exposed, to which La Voz has had access, another reason why people were left on the ground was due to the presence of a single official in the control instead of two that the space allows.
"There is a delay in the control of the flight probably by having only 50% of the personnel at that boarding gate, to give priority to arrivals, together with a possible failure of the passport verification systems that is becoming habitual," the document states. This made the company decide to close boarding without the passengers who were missing to board the plane being able to do so.
Also, as detailed in the complaint, "the official who controls the described flight is not assigned to the Arrecife Police Station or Lanzarote Airport and belongs to the staff of the General Commissariat of Immigration and Borders in Madrid." One of the reasons that further aggravated the situation, according to the agent, was the entry into force of Brexit."
On the other hand, the complaint states that the actions in this border control are not carried out as they should. "We are aware that up to 30 weekly extraordinary services are being appointed to try to comply with the minimum required by the Border Code punctually, which would be the verification and stamping, without asking for the other requirements such as means of subsistence, return ticket, accommodation and verification of previous stays in the period of 180 days," it is exposed.
For its part, the airline blames the National Police for its "mismanagement" and Aena for "the malfunction of the services." Some of the affected passengers "were able to buy tickets to fly, but others had to stay in hotels" to wait to return to their country.
