Hacker News Reader

Comment by jamesrr39 | Hacker News Reader

Also in Europe, but with a completely different experience; it is (well, was, pre-covid) easy to move between EU states.

Within the Schengen Zone it's only the check at the gate to check your ID matches your boarding pass (so no check at "immigration"), and to/from the UK the electronic gates have really sped things up (compared to the old days).

YMMV but I find I'm rarely waiting more than a few minutes at the immigration checks (to/from UK) nowadays.

View on HN

Tell that to France. They still do passport checks on flights coming in from Schengen countries.

Especially stupid since I’ll be flying into southern France from neighbouring Brussels or Frankfurt. Like, if I’m up to no good, I could drive into France more quickly.

They’re allowed to do it “temporarily”, so they just renew their exemption year after year.

interesting. this seems to indicate that Schengen countries decided on a national level if they wanted to do checks on their borders. I have seen hard passport checks within Schengen in Croatia, Sweden, Germany, France and Portugal.

Good to hear the UK has improved. I should have mentioned I haven't been there since 2018. I was expecting that brexit made things worse and had no idea

Croatia is not part of Schengen so there shouldn't be any surprise about them doing the hard checks. They are hoping to enter this year.

Greece doesn't check ID at the airport either, beyond matching your boarding pass to your name.

Brexit didn't really kick in until January this year, and covid impact masks any brexit impact

This really doesn’t add up. Who was performing these hard passport checks? An airline employee? Where was your flight originating from/going to?

France does them. Can confirm on flights from Brussels and Frankfurt.

Allowed “Temporarily” under “extenuating” circumstances and “only as a last resort”, so they renew it every year and have provided zero proof of its effectiveness. It’s just theatre.

If they applied it to road traffic too, then, okay, fine at the airport too. But checking passports of people coming in from a neighbouring country by air only is beyond stupid.

https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/border...

Extra do-nothing jobs at Toulouse airport that receives few non-Schengen flights.

it was done by a customs official. long queue and everyone on the plane had to do it every time that I was there. I've never entered the UK without having to go through this.

Dublin -> Heathrow

Frankfurt -> Heathrow

Stockholm -> Heathrow

... and as I said I have seen similar things arriving in Frankfurt (in 2017 and 2018) and other places (Dublin -> Zagreb etc)

None of these routes were within Schengen, of course you’re going through border control when flying to the UK.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com