Following hours-long passport-control lines on Saturday, Brussels Airport Company (BAC) fast-tracked the installation of 50 additional self-service Entry/Exit System (EES) kiosks overnight between 1 and 2 August. The new lanes bring the total number of automated booths in Pier B to 118, making Brussels one of the best-equipped Schengen border points ahead of the autumn travel surge. The roll-out follows a difficult weekend in which non-EU passengers reported waits of up to 2.5 hours, causing nearly 30 short-haul departures to leave without connecting travellers. BAC and the Federal Police blamed a perfect storm of Tomorrowland departures, a Lufthansa crew-scheduling glitch and a temporary outage in the shared biometric database. While manual desks were opened, staffing proved insufficient. Under the new set-up, travellers create or update their EES biometric profile at the kiosk, receive a QR-coded slip and proceed to an e-gate for facial-match verification – a process the airport says now averages 38 seconds per person. Families with children under 10 will still need to visit a staffed booth, but dedicated ‘Family Assistance Hosts’ have been added during peak waves. Corporate travel managers welcomed the move, noting that Belgium’s pharma and aerospace clusters rely heavily on long-haul itineraries that connect in Brussels. However, they continue to urge clients to arrive at least three hours before departure until operations stabilise. BAC confirmed it will reimburse airlines for missed connections caused by Saturday’s disruption, in line with new EU passenger-rights rules coming into force next month.
