Holidaymakers were left vomiting and fainting in a queue from hell at Milan airport.
Around 100 easyJet customers were stranded at Linate airport on Sunday due to delays brought on by latest border checks within the EU.
The airline said the chaos was ‘outside of our control’ and even delayed take off by 52 minutes to try give passengers beyond regular time to get on board.
Dozens of Britons were left scrambling to search out alternative journeys home after some only discovered that they had missed their flight once it had taken off without them.
One passenger, Kiera, 17, said that only 30 people made it onto the plane while 100 didn’t.
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The Oldham local, who faced a 20 hour wait for an alternate flight, told the BBC: ‘We came at 7.30am for our flight at 11am so were super early.
‘We got to Border Control and it was a large queue of individuals. I wasn’t feeling great anyway because I believe I’d got food poisoning.
‘At about 10.50am they brought some water over for people, and once we got to the front of the queue someone asked us if we were going to Manchester, and told us our flight had just gone.’
The brand new return journey had cost her mother £520 and that they’d be going to Gatwick, not Manchester.
Kiera said easyJet had only offered £12.25 in compensation.
Adam Lomas, 33, an accountant from Wakefield, became stranded together with his wife Katy, 31, and their four-month-old daughter.
The dad was sat within the airport for hours and that when he tried to contact easyJet he was faced with ‘chatbots’ and ‘audio issues’.
He told the BBC: ‘The airport and easyJet have spent hours arguing with one another about who’s guilty.’
Adam said his family were forced to search out a brand new hotel and book flights back to London, before then needing a to get a two-and-a-half-hour train to Manchester.
Easyjet called the delays brought on by the EU’s latest Entry/Exit System (EES) ‘unacceptable’.
The brand new system requires passengers from third-party countries, including the UK, need to have their fingerprints and pictures taken as they enter the Schengen Area.
EES registration is replacing the system of manually stamping passports and the UK government warned it’d take longer for passengers to finish.
What are the EU’s latest EES border check requirements?
The European Union’s latest Entry-Exit System, referred to as the EES, will connect every crossing point within the Schengen Area.
Every EU country within the Schengen area can be connected, apart from Ireland and Cyprus, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.
Travellers can be required handy over biometric data akin to their fingerprints and a photograph scanned with facial recognition technology.
The system goals to crack down on crime and implement the limit on EU stays for British and third-country residents, which is 90 days inside any 180 days.
Most travellers from outside the EU, referred to as third-country nationals, can be required to register their passport details and biometric data when crossing into an EU country for the primary time.
Biometric data includes fingerprints and facial pictures. Borders are more likely to be kitted with self-service kiosks where passengers can input this information.
This data, in addition to the entry and exit details, can be stored for subsequent visits.
Future visits will only require a verification of the biometric data, which may speed up the method.
Children aren’t exempt from the checks, although children under 12 don’t need to offer fingerprints; nonetheless they may also must have their face scanned.
The system became fully operational on April 10 and caused travel chaos across last weekend.
A spokesman for easyJet said: ‘We’re aware that some passengers departing from Milan Linate today experienced longer than usual waiting times at passport control and we advised customers as a consequence of fly to permit additional time to make their way through the airport.
‘We’ve got been doing all possible to minimise the impact of the airport queues, holding flights to permit customers beyond regular time and providing free flight transfers for any customers who can have missed their flight including EJU5420 to Manchester.
‘We proceed to induce border authorities to make sure they make full and effective use of the permitted flexibilities for so long as needed while European Entry / Exit System is implemented, to avoid these unacceptable border delays for our customers.
‘While that is outside of our control, we’re sorry for any inconvenience caused.’
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