Stansted passengers' 'two and a half hour wait' at passport control
The Home Office says the longest wait that day was 42 minutes
Piers Meyler
The queue in Stansted Airport at 1.30pm on August 2
Passengers are waiting more than 40 minutes for passport control at Stansted Airport - with one family claiming their wait lasted two and a half hours.
According to the husband of one passenger who flew into the airport at around 1.30pm on Thursday (August 2), people were having to wait more than two hours to get through passport control.
But the Home Office says this is inaccurate and that the longest wait that day for EU nationals was 42 minutes.
Other passengers have been claiming there were long delays of 45 minutes on August 1 and another traveller complained it took 90 minutes to get through passport control on July 24.
'They were stuck'
Passengers have complained of huge queues at Stansted Airport (Image: © SWNS Group © SWNS Group)
Children under 12 are not allowed to use the automatic gates and Mason Forbes, whose wife and children had been flying back from Germany, said: "There seems to be an issue with children under 12 – no-one tells you why. People had been separated to the left and right hand sides.
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"The left was for those with e-passports and was free flowing but anyone with ID as opposed to a passport, and childen under 12, had to go to the right. They were stuck."
With Brexit fast approaching, concerns have been raised about how long people might spend in queues at passport control.
Theresa May said said she wants dedicated passport lanes for UK citizens overruling Sajid Javid, who said it would cost too much and could also create longer waiting times.
However Mason said Stansted, which had around 20 lanes open of a possible 30 when his family landed, needed to be more prepared. The airport is asking for permission to increase the number of passengers it can handle a year from 35 million to 43 million.
He said: "It is already at its limit, never mind anyone changing anything.
"Unless they keep things moving , there will be log jams everywhere and there is not the capacity to deal with it."
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New arrivals hall in 2020
A London Stansted Airport spokesperson said: "London Stansted Airport's £600 million transformation project will include a new arrivals hall which will open in 2020. This state of the art facility will include a larger immigration and baggage reclaim areas and will cater for the future growth in passenger numbers."
A Home Office spokesperson refuted the claims of passengers and said: "Every effort is made to keep delays to a minimum, but we also have a duty to maintain the security of the UK border - which means checking 100 per cent of scheduled arriving passengers.
"The longest wait times for EU nationals at Stansted on Thursday August 2 was 42 minutes so to suggest queues exceeded two and a half hours would be inaccurate."