Holidaymakers were warned yesterday to expect summer holiday travel chaos as the first signs emerged that the Government's new border controls are causing significant delays at airports.
The introduction of sophisticated scanning machinery by the newly-created Border and Immigration Agency (BIA) has doubled the time it takes to process passengers arriving back in the country.
An immigration officer checks a British passport
The new technology, which uses lasers to scan passports, has created havoc at Stansted airport and there have been reports of delays at Luton.
Airlines fear that the problem will spread as the system is extended to other airports over the next few months.
Stephen Nelson, the chief executive of BAA, which runs the leading airports, held crisis talks yesterday with Douglas Alexander, the Transport Secretary.
They were attempting to avert another summer of delays and disruptions - with the new passport controls top of the agenda.
The technology is designed to improve passport security and tighten immigration controls on all arrivals - including UK and EU citizens, who in the past have been subject to more relaxed measures.
London's airports alone will have to handle more than a quarter of a million arrivals a day over the summer.
A BAA spokesman said last night: "We have spent over £20 million, recruited another 1,400 security staff and put another 21 checkpoints in place to handle passengers as they leave.
"But it is not our job to ensure their smooth entry into the country, that is down to the Border and Immigration Agency to provide enough staff."
The threat of further chaos comes as the travel industry starts to get to grips with tighter security arrangements put in place for passengers leaving the country. Now airlines are bracing themselves for delays when they come back.
Passengers have already complained of waiting more than an hour to clear immigration when returning to Britain in recent months. But it will be worse when the holiday season reaches its peak.
"There is going to be chaos in the summer," said John Tincey, the vice-chairman of the Immigration Service Union.
Queues have been lengthening recently, with the arrivals hall at Stansted reaching bursting point at times.
On at least one occasion the police threatened to prosecute immigration officials for public order offences because of the overcrowding.
Under the previous immigration system, officials simply swiped passports through a scanner which read a series of encoded letters and numbers.
Now they have to use equipment designed for the new generation of biometric passports with security holograms and computer-embedded data introduced to make forgeries more difficult.
Older documents are still swiped as they were before, but in some cases additional information is tapped into a computer to further verify the identity of the passengers.
"It used to take between three to four seconds to process a passenger," said Mr Tincey. "Now you are looking at eight to 10 seconds, so it has more than doubled.
"At busy times this makes the situation impossible.
"Stansted is growing very quickly and our staffing was struggling to keep up even before the regime changed.
"Gatwick, Luton and Birmingham have also been badly hit because of the growth in low-cost airlines and they are all due to get this equipment soon."
Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, said: "This country is in danger of being taken over by 'secureocrats' who seem intent on bringing airports to a grinding halt. These are the same people who came up with the ridiculous idea that stopping people travelling with toothpaste and eye make-up would make us safer last year."
While the BIA believes that it has enough staff to process new arrivals smoothly under normal conditions, the extra seconds needed to process individual passengers can lead to significant delays if flight schedules are disrupted.
Passengers travelling to Spain yesterday were subject to tighter restrictions, with airlines required to provide information about people on their planes before take-off.
A BIA spokesman said: "The number of border control staff is at an all time high.
"While allowing most passengers into the UK quickly, thorough checks are necessary to turn away criminals, prevent illegal immigration and protect the public. We make no apology. New biometric technology is being rolled out so trusted travellers can pass through border control more quickly."
"We ensure that there are sufficient numbers of staff on duty, based on published flight schedules and the number of anticipated passengers.
"However, there are times when flight arrivals vary from their schedules which causes 'bunching' of passengers at immigration controls."
America also plans to tighten controls, including fingerprinting passengers on departure and arrival.
Expat Village is edited and published by
Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
