Minister calls for Uk-only passport lanes to retaliate for ‘Brexit’ queues

BRITAIN should introduce Uk-only passport lanes at its airports amid concerns that Europe has brought in tougher security checks on holidaymakers as a “warning” over Brexit, a minister has said.

Tourists are having to queue for up to four hours at passport control in some European countries after the introduction of tougher security checks in the wake of terror attacks on the continent.

The detailed checks, which were introduced in May, apply to British citizens because the UK is not a member of the open-borders Schengen zone. However, a Tory minister highlighted the fact that European nations such as Belgium, Holland and Germany have all seen significant numbers of their citizens join Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The minister told The Daily Telegraph: “One wonders if this isn’t just subterfuge from EU member states, if they aren’t just trying to give us a warning that this is something that’s in store for us after Brexit. Holland, Belgium and Germany have among the highest numbers of Isil fighters.

“Should we be putting extra controls on them?

“We should consider British-only lanes in the UK if they want to behave like that. Border controls should be based on reciprocal relationships.

“If it abuses this reciprocity we should have British only lanes.” Holidaymakers have been told to expect queues stretching “hundreds of metres” at airports such as Madrid, Palma, Lisbon, Lyon, Paris Orly, Milan and Brussels. The checks are imposed on

With travellers already subjected to seemingly endless bouts of misery, and more predicted for this weekend, the perennial summer issue raises its ugly head again: why is air travel such a nightmare?

Or is that too broad a question? Maybe what we should be asking is: isn’t it airlines who are contributing massively to the problem by providing such poor service? New European security measures are being blamed for last weekend’s check-in queues, but British Airways was mired in chaos this week after what’s being labelled its seventh IT breakdown of the year, while in Nice an easyjet passenger was punched by an airport worker during a 13-hour flight delay caused by a technical problem.

It is easy for the airline industry’s apologists to claim that we are only getting what we pay for and that the ever-increasing demand for air travel – up from some 300million passengers worldwide in 1970 to 3.8 billion last year and predicted to soar to over 7.2billion by 2035 – has created a race to the bottom in “no frills” ticket prices. But should that be an excuse for poor service? I don’t think so.

I’ve just returned from two weeks in France, half of which time my teenage daughter was deprived of her luggage thanks to the incompetence of KLM.

It wasn’t so much the loss of the rucksack that infuriated, after all such things happen all the time; no, it was the airline’s attitude to what was, after all, a huge inconvenience.

The so-called customer service department of the airline was a joke. “Oh, you must feel sad,” said one of its operatives in something of an understatement to my wife on Day Three of the saga. It was particularly aggravating because KLM insisted that we deal with them through Twitter.

Thus did @KLM become my main port of call for days on end, as the airline wriggled and twisted as it attempted to escape responsibility for the missing bag. You see they’d passed responsibility for getting the rucksack to our holiday address to a third party – a France-wide delivery company.

As far as KLM was concerned, it was nothing to do with them that promised delivery times came and went, still with no bag. That I’d paid the airline – not their delivery company

– £22 on top of the ticket price to get that bag to our destination appeared to be of no consequence to KLM. “Phone the delivery company,” KLM said on Day Six, at last giving me its number. I did but got no answer. A friend tried but was told everyone was at lunch. Eventually the intrepid French godmother of my daughters took the matter in hand.

She went straight down to the firm’s Lyon depot and refused to leave, even threatening to sleep on their doorstep, until they tracked down the rucksack. That did the trick. The browbeaten manager, faced with this not-so fairy godmother, located it at another branch and promised to have it delivered next day. It was a full week after KLM had lost it.

In Holland Herald, KLM’S in-flight magazine, Pieter Elbers, the company’s chief executive, says to his passengers: “We want to offer you an unforgettable travel experience.” You certainly did that Meneer Elbers, but perhaps not in the way you’d intended. Executives like you need to understand that when you subcontract basic tasks, it is still your name on the tin as far as customers are concerned – and your reputation on the line.