The national government delegate in the Balearics, Rosario Sánchez, yesterday accompanied the chief of the National Police, Antonio Jarabo, and the director of Son Sant Joan Airport, José Antonio Álvarez, in officially presenting the new system for passport control.
The system has in fact been operating since July. There are forty automated control points in arrivals and forty more in departures. The average time for checking passports in departures is now currently fifteen seconds; in arrivals it is twenty seconds. The average waiting time for the manual system was between four and five minutes.
The airports authority Aena has invested 10.3 million euros in installing the scanning and recognition system at the airport. Sánchez said that it is an effective solution to what she admitted had been a persistent problem with passport control delays.
