"Oh, and while there were hundreds waiting to get they passport control, there were 3 windows open."

Check my recent trip report. Yes, 3 windows. It was pathetic.

((H))

This seems to have steadily worsened and is worrying.. I have a 1hr 45 minute transit (same ticket, Air France) between arriving (from Mumbai) in 2E and departing (for Toulouse) from 2F in May ... fingers crossed!

Anybody with a "tight" transit goes to the head of the line.

As for me, I arrived yesterday in Orly from something as simple as Scotland. There were 5 windows open for EU/EEA/CH passports and absolutely nobody waiting there. But there were at least 200 unhappy people in line for "other" passports. This is called reciprocity. People are treated the way EU/EEA/CH passports are treated in other countries. Do you consider this to be unfair?

They never, ever, have enough people at the immigration stops to manage the number of passengers. It's maddening. We go through the EU passport line, but even that isn't much faster.

Plus, we have recently learned that there is "passport control"even when transferring from one Schengen country to another (in our case Milan to Toulouse), which creates another blockage of sometimes enormous proportions. It happens after you go through the take-your-belt-off-and-put-your-computer-in-this-tray nonsense and before you can actually board the plane. You think, yeah, we're finally heading to the boarding gate, but no...another huge pile-up for a passport check. Why?

Do you consider this to be unfair?>

spiteful -is that fair to common blokes who have no role in the fight - petty and INCROYABLE

PalenQ, did you miss the word "reciprocity?"

The next time you fly from a foreign country to the United States, I suggest that you get in the line for foreign travelers instead of "US citizens and Green Cards" and then give us a report of what you think of the lines for getting into the country.

I think it's terrible to treat our visitors like that - terrible and inexcusable. A real shame.

"There were 5 windows open for EU/EEA/CH passports and absolutely nobody waiting there. But there were at least 200 unhappy people in line for "other" passports."

This sounds more cock-up than deliberate planning.

There IS a management discipline called "labour scheduling" that helps professionally-managed business match workers to customer demand. Investigating adoption of this discipline in European government-run operations (like post offices or passport control desks) some years ago, I found not a single example of its being used. Apart from anything else, many public sector unions find the concept ideologically offensive.

Usually, strict segregation between queues for EU/EEA passengers and everyone else doesn't happen outside the UK either - though possibly France has begun to enforce this since the increase in terrorism.

Kerouac's description sounds horrendous. But - almost uniquely in the world - it's practically always the case that ALL the EU's international entry points get far more EU/EEA passengers than non-Europeans. There are 600 million of us - and we travel across borders far more than any other group of people on earth.

When there is segregation at immigration between Europeans and the rest, the reason we get through quicker is usually because more of us use the automated gates, and because entry for us requires less checking.

Unlike in the US, I've NEVER seen evidence of a higher official:passenger ratio for locals than for the rest. Kerouac's example is completely at odds with my experience every time I cross a European border.