One year after the first biometric kiosks appeared in Terminal 1, Prague Airport has finished migrating all non-EU border posts to the EU Entry/Exit System (EES). Airport board member Martin Kučera told business daily E15 on 27 June that the new ‘travel on your face’ procedure has cut average passport-control times from nine to six minutes despite record passenger numbers. Under EES, non-EU travellers—including Brits and Americans—are photographed and have four fingerprints scanned on their first entry. Subsequent crossings use facial verification at automated e-gates. The system replaces passport stamps and automatically calculates remaining Schengen-stay days, a feature Kučera believes will “eradicate inadvertent overstay fines”. The final phase, completed last week, integrated carriers’ DCS data so that flight manifests pre-populate kiosk sessions, further speeding the process. Airport IT reports that more than 1.2 million biometric profiles have been created since October 2025 with only a 0.3 % fallback to manual booths. For companies rotating assignees through Prague the change means they must now factor a one-time five-minute enrolment on first arrival and ensure staff carry passports with at least two blank pages; damaged biometric chips trigger secondary screening. Mobility teams should also remind travellers that the forthcoming ETIAS travel authorisation—delayed to 2027—will ride on the same database. Kučera confirmed that the airport is working with the Interior Ministry to allow EES-registered travellers to use mobile pre-clearance in 2027, pending EU legal approval. Until then, the advice is simple: “Look at the camera, wait for the green arrow and keep moving.”
Source: E15.cz
