Originally Posted by
Cymro
Madrid - inbound Thursday at noon, returning Sunday at 15.50.
Inbound was an absolute mess. Queues outside the hall and approximately 2.5h from touchdown to baggage hall. Around 15% of terminals working, very slow moving and simply overwhelmed. I was one of the lucky few selected for the EES self-service and it processed me very quickly with no intrusive questions although I did have to give consent (other lawful bases are available!)
A friend of mine got a similar experience in MAD T4, arriving yesterday from SDQ and connecting to VCE. She barely made her connecting flight. She is a US passport holder. She waited over an hour to get her first registration via a self service kiosk. The algorithm directed her to the EES eGates, where she missed the passport stamp due to the chaos.
Apparently it wasn’t a problem for her once we got stopped by police while driving in Cortina today (lots of law enforcement here for the Olympics). Police demanded all passengers IDs and her stamp-less passport was fine.