Prague Airport, in cooperation with the Police of the Czech Republic and the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, is implementing a comprehensive package of measures to facilitate border checks for passengers from non-Schengen countries. Following a decision by the extraordinary meeting of the board of directors on 18 September, at which Chairman Radomír Lašák presented the proposed action plan, the airport is gradually managing peak arrival times more smoothly. Key priority areas include passenger care and operational coordination directly within the passport control area.
“Everything we do is geared towards achieving our goals – we don't want passengers to spend even a minute longer than absolutely necessary at passport control. The key to eliminating queues lies in a detailed understanding of why people make mistakes at self-service kiosks or fail to complete the registration. We are introducing a series of measures, such as a new standard of care and significantly improved communication across multiple languages. Our goal is not merely to resolve the immediate situation, but to create a stable and resilient system for the long term,” says Radomír Lašák, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Prague Airport.
A number of specific measures have already been successfully implemented in recent weeks and months. When the EES was introduced last year, members of the so-called ‘Red Team’ were permanently deployed in the terminal to help coordinate passenger flow and prioritise the processing of elderly passengers, families with children and people with reduced mobility. At the same time, the airport has long been analysing critical arrival times from non-Schengen countries using a heatmap and forecasting peak periods 30 days in advance to scale up capacity in good time. All operations are being conducted in close cooperation with the Immigration Police and the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic, with whom preparations are underway for additional checkpoints and increased check-in processing capacity.
These completed measures are being followed by a series of actions commissioned for immediate implementation. An expanded multilingual version of apology and information notices has been commissioned for the display screens, now also featuring languages such as Hebrew and Chinese. At the same time, passenger assistance is being rolled out in the form of complimentary bottled water and apologies distributed to travellers waiting in queues. Trained staff stationed directly at the self-service EES kiosks will identify and ask passengers about the specific reasons for unsuccessful registrations, informing subsequent UX adjustments aimed at increasing the registration completion rate from the current 60% to 80%. Additional floor signage is being installed within the terminal area to guide passengers more intuitively, whilst preparations are underway with airlines to inform passengers prior to their arrival in Prague.