The department led by Grande-Marlaska has no record of the “chaos” revealed by Iberia
The Ministry of the Interior has assured this Tuesday that neither its department nor Aena have received complaints from passengers or airlines for the alleged loss of flights denounced by Iberia, although this summer it will reinforce the 12 main Spanish airports with some 500 ultimate agents.
Sources from the department led by Fernando Grande-Marlaska have reiterated that they have no record of the “chaos“revealed by Iberia, which encrypted this Monday in 15,000 the connections lost by its passengers since last March 1, blamed on queues and delays in passport controls at Spanish airports.
Specifically, Iberia denounced that last day the departure of numerous flights in T4 of the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport as a result of long queues in the passport control area.
For his part, the president of the Madrid Business Confederation (CEIM, employers’ association), Miguel Garrido, assured this Tuesday that it is “urgent” for the Interior to recompose at airports “the quality that such an important activity must have” such as that related to the entry of tourists into Spain.
The same Interior sources have announced that as of the end of this month of June, the police staff at the airports of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura it will be reinforced by about 500 agents.
Thus, the total number of police assigned to these airports, about 1,725, It will be higher than the existing staff before the pandemic -1,456 in June 2019-, all despite the fact that Aena’s passenger forecast for this month, 16 million, is less than the 19 million estimated in the same period of 2019.
The agents will come from the last promotion that was sworn in on May 20 and, of the total of 500 new police officers at said airports, 189 will go to the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport, which will reach 600 officers, and 90 to the Madrid-Barajas airport. The Prat.
Furthermore, the so-called summer plan 2022 will send an unknown number of trainees to these and other airports during the summer season.
The Interior has insisted that the definitive reinforcement of the Immigration and Borders workforce at the country’s busiest airports will be carried out when the passenger forecasts announced by Aena are still lower than the levels prior to the start of the pandemic, since it estimates for this 2022 a total of 56 million passengers compared to the 66 registered in 2019.
Despite not having evidence of any formal complaint from airlines or travellers, the same sources have explained that queues or delays in passport controls may occur in a timely and non-structural manner, since police filters are dimensioned to passenger flow and reinforced when necessary.
Regarding the exceptional situation of the british travellers, which account for around 10 percent of annual passengers at Spanish airports, Interior emphasizes that, despite being obliged to go through passport control, the inspection carried out on them is minimal.
British citizens, as approved by the European Comission, they enter the country through the same automatic controls as European citizens, although they do so through a unique queue and with the corresponding stamp from their passport.
The same Interior sources assure that the Police personnel in these controls is sufficient despite the volume of Britons who, since the approval of Brexit, go through the inspections corresponding to the countries that do not belong to the Schengen area.