With many Irish tourists jetting off to Spain this summer for a holiday, they will be hoping to escape long queues at Dublin Airport.
But travel chaos could await them on the other side too as a Spanish airline claimed thousands of their passengers were missing flights due to delays.
Iberia Airlines said on Monday that around 15,000 of its passengers had missed their flight since March 1 due to delays and chaos at Madrid's Barajas Airport passport control.
However, the long lines at Spain's busiest airport in recent weeks should ease as the Spanish police are hiring more staff to deal with the surge in tourism from the easing of COVID-19 restrictions, the government said on Tuesday.
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With a reinforcement of 500 new hires, more than 1,700 officials will work at Spain's busiest airports, including in Madrid and Barcelona, to control the flow of foreign tourists that has increased markedly in the past weeks.
The chaos to Madrid Airport is similar to problems at airports in Britain, Amsterdam and elsewhere in Europe due to the uptake in travel as Covid rules ease.
Meanwhile, the Spanish Interior Ministry denied anyone had missed a flight at the airport, which is operated by Aena SME.
"In recent months the National Police has not registered a single complaint for missed flights," the ministry said in a statement.
"There are no queues or delays that go beyond punctual situations generated by the coincidence of several flights from outside the Schengen area," the statement said.
People from within the Schengen area, a group of 26 European countries, which includes Spain, can travel freely without presenting passports.
To further relieve pressure on arrivals, a separate queue will be set up for British tourists, the biggest group of foreign visitors to Spain, so they can use electronic passport gates, a police source said.
British travellers will still need to get their passports stamped after using the electronic gates, the source added.
According to the Interior Ministry, around 18.7 million travellers will travel through Madrid's Airport in June this year.
