Originally Posted by
IAN-UK
Lisbon's tricky. Lulled by the wonderland of duty-free, luxe shops, cafes and lounges after security, I'm guessing many passengers are only half-aware of the further layer of inspection required to gain access to the international pier, and exit the EU. And they won't be expecting the build up of queues for the inpection of non-EU documents, particularly when there are banks of flights to Africa, Brasil and the US.
This definitely caught me by surprise. I've never flown BA out of LIS, only TP, and my first time flying them LIS-LCY back in 2017 (before Brexit, but I'm a US passport holder so this was a non-EU line experience) I came face to face with this. I checked in 3 hours before, headed to the lounge in the Schengen area, had a leisurely lunch, and thought that heading for border control to the non-Schengen area an hour to departure would leave me with plenty of time. It did not. By the time I'd entered the non-Schengen area, it was 5 minutes to departure and the first departure board I saw on the other side said "gate closed" for my flight, so I went to the gate expecting to have to plead my case to be placed onto the next flight, probably to LHR instead of LCY. This is where TP did better than BA in this case- in my case, halfway to my gate I heard an agent running towards me shouting "London City! London City!" They'd actually held it and I actually made it to my flight.
This is why I think people saying "there's no BA staff at LIS" may actually have a point, because the experience flying the hub carrier was somewhat better (the queue was atrocious but the handling of the parts within the airline's control).