Portugal Unveils Emergency Airport Measures to Ease Christmas 2025 Queues

Portugal’s airports are bracing for a December 2025 travel surge that could dwarf last summer’s chaos. The government says a stop-gap plan is almost ready, but nervous holidaymakers are already asking whether it will be enough to keep queues, biometrics and server glitches from ruining the season.

Snapshot for busy readers

• 80 extra PSP officers promised for Lisbon between 23 December and 6 January

• Temporary pause of the EU Entry/Exit System (EES) still under discussion

• Electronic kiosks are replacing manual passport stamps and causing slow-downs

• Task-force “war room” now active inside Humberto Delgado’s Terminal 1

• Airlines advising travellers to arrive 3½ hours early on peak days

Why Christmas 2025 is different

Even by Portuguese standards of férias intensity, this year’s rush is expected to be extreme. Lisbon Airport handles more than 70 % of the nation’s long-haul flights, and passenger numbers are forecast to jump 12 % over last December. Unlike previous years, officers must now capture and upload fingerprints, facial scans, passport data and a digital time-stamp for every non-EU passenger. Each step adds precious seconds; multiply by a full wide-body arrival and you get a two-hour bottleneck before breakfast.

Inside the still-secret contingency plan

Authorities refuse to publish the full blueprint before a final risk review, yet several measures have leaked via parliamentary hearings:

Police reinforcements – an initial 20 officers already deployed, 30 more finishing three-day airport-security training, plus 30 drafted from suburban commands.

EES “kill switch” – a Commission-approved waiver that lets border guards revert to old-school passport stamps if waiting times top an unspecified red line.

Mobile biometric teams – roving units equipped with tablet scanners designed to clear secondary queues for families and elderly travellers.

Real-time dashboards – ANA’s ops centre now streams minute-by-minute occupancy to a “crisis room” shared with the PSP and the Internal Security System.

Public alerts – push notifications in Portuguese and English warning inbound passengers when the green channel is faster than the automatic gate.

A European headache, Portuguese pressure

Portugal is not alone. France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Germany and even Iceland have reported wait-time spikes of up to 70 % since the EES went live on 12 October. Yet Lisbon’s single-runway layout and tight terminal footprint leave it less capable of absorbing snags. ACI Europe has already warned of “chaos” if the system stumbles during the twin peaks of 24–26 December and 31 December–2 January. That places extra political heat on Interior Minister Maria Lúcia Amaral, whose minority-backed government can ill afford photos of pensioners stranded behind snaking ropes.

What could still go wrong

The plan’s success hinges on three fragile pieces:• Servers: a five-minute outage last Tuesday forced officers to reboot every kiosk, doubling lines immediately.• Kiosk software: Portugal adopted a version customised for Portuguese, French and English prompts; any localisation bug can freeze a terminal mid-scan.• Staffing curve: reinforcements arrive in waves, but the busiest inbound banks—06:00-11:00—start before many shifts are on site. Should fog divert flights from Madrid or Paris, the buffer evaporates.

Tips for travellers flying from Portugal

• Book morning departures after 09:30 if possible; the crunch is heaviest just after dawn when trans-Atlantic red-eyes land.• Check ANA’s app two days before travel; it now flags projected queue times by flight number.• Have documents ready – full pages visible, no phone cases that trigger glare, and keep masks off during facial capture.• Consider Porto or Faro if your route allows; both airports are rolling out EES kiosks gradually and report 30 % shorter waits.

Looking beyond the holidays

If Christmas exposes deeper flaws, Lisbon’s emergency schedule may morph into a year-round reality. Ten new border-guard training classes are slated for 2026, and the government is revisiting long-delayed expansion plans at Montijo and Alcochete. For now, officials insist the immediate objective is simple: get families to the table by Christmas lunch without an airport ordeal becoming the main story of the day.