Wizz Air’s Moynihan said the impact of the new checks was “fragmented across Europe”.
While there has been some “seamless travel”, she said there had been long queues at “usual hotspots such as Spain, Portugal, France”.
When Moynihan travelled to Mallorca for half term, she encountered no queues, with extra staff on hand and “a significant amount of [EES] kiosks”.
However, she said in general her airline was advising passengers to prepare for long waits.
“When you land in the destination airport, there might be queues, so you should bring a portable charger or water,” she said.
Because EES information has to be verified when people leave, she also highlighted the risk of queues before flights back to the UK.
“Because there is another passport check…that’s where we see that people have, again, experienced longer waiting times than anticipated,” she said.
She said usual advice is to get to the airport two hours ahead of your flight – “but in these circumstances, we are advising three hours”.
Moynihan advised anyone taking a connecting flight to allow “a number of hours” between flights in case of border queues.
She said border officials were proactively suspending EES checks if long waits built up.
The European Commission says EES isn’t the only thing that can cause delays, and registering information usually only takes around a minute.
