Hundreds miss flights at Madrid airport due to passport control chaos

Passport control delays at Spain's busiest airport on Wednesday caused travel chaos and hundreds of passengers to miss their flights, even though their luggage was loaded on the planes.

The delays, which saw both a reported shortage in police officers at passport control areas and a technical failure, has set off a blame game between Spain’s Transport and Interior Ministries.

The day turned into a nightmare for travellers leaving Spain from Barajas’ Terminal 4 on Wednesday, with hours-long delays and hundreds of passengers missing international connections.

Queues at passport control, which is the responsibility of Spain's Interior Ministry and police, surged between 11am and 2pm following the arrival of several flights at once.

Spanish daily El País reports that Interior Ministry sources claim there were two police officers checking passports in each of the 16 booths, as is customary. However, other sources familiar with the situation maintain that only half were occupied when the crowds began to gather and long lines soon grew.

The growing delays were then worsened by technical failures due to a computer error, further slowing processes at the border.

“This is a temporary situation caused by the accumulation of flights in a very short period of time and coinciding with a specific computer problem, now resolved, in accessing the applications used by the national police,” Ministry sources indicated.

In an attempt to avoid possible security problems, staff from Aena, Spain’s national airports network operator, began regulating access to the train connecting T4 with T4S. The operator indicated that passengers travelling to destinations within Spain or the rest of the EU were not affected by these problems.

The chaos also slowed down passage through baggage control, which further delayed many international travellers.

However, as a result of the delays, two government ministries have now begun a blame game.

The Transport Ministry has briefed a different version of events from the Interior Ministry, distancing itself from images of long queues of hundreds of passengers stuck at passport control and pointing the finger at the police and Interior Ministry.

“The incident has nothing to do with this Ministry or with Aena. There is no chaos in the management of the airport,” a statement said. “The situation that has arisen is solely and exclusively due to a problem of a police nature in the management of the arrival of passengers with passport control, which is the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior.”

However police union representatives have defended their colleagues. “It is impossible to control 20 flights with 500 passengers per flight in the space of an hour. It is physically impossible, you cannot sell [these tickets] as some of the companies operating with Aena are doing in this case,” said a union spokesman, seemingly suggesting overbooking on the part of some airlines.

The Federal Police Union (UFP) stated that the travel chaos was not down to a lack of staff but rather the number of flights scheduled to arrive during a busy time slot on such an important day in the summer season, according to its spokesperson, Carlos Quero.

In a post on social media showing the extent of the queues on Wednesday, the Spanish Police Confederation (CEP) stated that its officers did a “great job” but added that “the need to increase police numbers at this location is clear.”

The post also included the hashtag #MarlaskaDimite, calling for the Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska to resign.

✈️ Colas en la T4S de #Barajas y miles de personas afectadas. Los compañeros, de diez 🔝. Pero la necesidad de potenciar con muchos más policías ese destino está a la vista. Mal el puesto fronterizo y mal la Jefatura Superior. Aquí denunciamos lo que otros callan. #MarlaskaDimite pic.twitter.com/G4OSt3Avv0

— CEP (@cep_cepolicia) July 2, 2025