**EXCLUSIVE**
BRITISH tourists in Spain have reported missing their flight home due to delays at a Spanish-operated passport control.
A passenger at the Lanzarote Arrecife Airport said herself and ‘30 other people’ were turned away from the flight on Thursday because getting through security ‘was taking too long.’
The Brit, who asked not to be named, claimed the queues were so long that by the time they turned up to their gate they were refused because ‘it had been closed for further boarding.’
She then said Ryanair spent 90 minutes removing their luggage, causing the flight to be delayed.
The flyer told the Olive Press: “Families were split up and I had to get back to Stansted for cancer treatment.
“Ryanair then had to spend an hour and a half getting luggage off of the plane. Therefore we could have boarded during that time. None of us were late to the gate.
“Disgusting behaviour by a supervisor who made the decision.”
She added: “We were told the gate was shut. Families were not given food, or alternative flights and hotels. People are being told to sort themselves out.
“One lady had to wait for her husband and daughter to be removed off the plane as she was left with their other child and had no money on her.
“I was wearing a lanyard for special needs as I’m a stage four cancer patient!”
A spokesperson for Ryanair told the Olive Press: “Due to Passport control delays at Lanzarote Airport (31 July), a number of passengers missed this flight to London Stansted.
“Should these passengers have presented at the boarding gate desk before it closed, they would have boarded this flight alongside the 140 passengers who did present at the gate on time.
“We regret that these airport passport delays at Lanzarote Airport, which are entirely out of our control, caused passengers to miss their flight.”
Ryanair added that once boarding has ended a manifest is sent to the pilot and the process cannot be re-started.
The chaos came after the airport was recently ordered to stamp Brits’ passports on both entry and departure.
It came after it emerged that it had hardly been carried out at the travel hub post-Brexit in a bid to reduce delays and long queues.
Since the UK left the EU, Brits are only allowed to spend 90 in every 180 days in the Schengen Zone – with dated stamps upon entry and exit designed to keep the tally.
But this has caused a nightmare at some tourist hotspots, particularly in Spain, which receive millions of UK visitors each year.
Brits now have to queue with other non-EU or ‘third’ countries, creating painfully long queues upon arrival and departure, particularly at peak times.
But sources told El Diario de Lanzarote that border control staff at the airport were ‘subtly and verbally’ told not to stamp UK passports.
The move was designed to ‘make the passage of British tourists easier.’
However this practice was recently rumbled and quashed by airport officials, who have now cracked down on stamping of UK passports.
But the sources said police do not have the resources to stamp every Brit returning home, with Thursdays said to be the worst.
