An OMAAT reader asked me about a situation he faced where he missed a flight due to excessively long security lines, only to then be forced to buy a new ticket. Is there really no recourse in these situations?! Let’s take a look.

Long Lisbon security lines cause missed TAP flight

An OMAAT reader shared the following experience with me, about a recent transit at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS):

I wanted to share an interesting thing that recently happened to me at the Lisbon Airport. I’m not sure if I did something wrong, TAP did something wrong, or it’s just an unfortunate situation, but considering how regulated European aviation is, I feel like I’ve been wronged.

On 26-MAR I was flying BRU-LIS-RAK on a business class fare paid in cash. My fiancee was traveling on the same flights, in the same class, on an Aeroplan award. The BRU-LIS flight on Thursday even went off without a hitch. We had an overnight layover in Lisbon.

The following morning, our scheduled departure time to Marrakech was 9:20, and we arrived at the airport at about 7:00 AM, a little over 2h before departure. We had boarding passes in hand, no checked baggage, and proceeded to fast track security, which we quickly cleared without incident.

Monitors were showing a 28 minute wait for non-EU passports, so we went straight to passport control. We were greeted with a massive, loud, and somewhat disorderly crowd. We assumed we’d be in line for a half hour, as advertised, but a half hour turned to an hour, which turned to 90 minutes, which became two hours…

As we sat in line, on several occasions we attempted to get the attention of airport staff to tell them of our approaching departure. We actually managed to team up with 7 other passengers on the flight, but they refused to let anyone move to the front of the queue (which in a sense I appreciate), until about 10 minutes before departure. At 9:10 we were stamped out of Portugal and ran to the departure gate only to see that it had been closed. About 5 minutes before departure time.

As we missed the flight, we were directed to exit the terminal and go to the ticket counter. The only accommodation TAP offered me, a paid business class passenger, was to purchase another ticket and fly out two days later. I wound up booking an EasyJet flight out later that afternoon and made it to RAK.

Coincidentally, the next TAP flight arrived 5 minutes before my EasyJet flight later that afternoon, and I saw several of the passengers that I met in the immigration line. The only option they were given was also to pay cash for a new ticket, and although they were all originally ticketed in economy, TAP only offered them business class tickets.

Look, I understand it’s the passenger’s responsibility to show up early enough, and the airline has no control over immigration. My question is, what is reasonable? I was at the airport over 2h before departure and went to the immigration line as quickly as possible. Clearly there is an issue in LIS because as I stated, 7 other passengers from my flight faced the same fate. Is there really nothing in TAP terms or EU regs that doesn’t require rebooking in a situation like this? US carriers have many deficiencies, but I’m certain I would have been rebooked in a similar situation.

The ticket agent told me I should have shown up earlier. I understand that in this isolated incident, but it just seems very unreasonable and very customer unfriendly.

Am I the one who is in the wrong here? I feel like I’m owed something, but I also understand the one-sided nature of contracts of carriage.

Anyway, I just thought I’d share. I guess maybe show up 5h early if you’re flying out of LIS in the morning.

Is there any recourse in a situation like this?

When I hear of people missing flights due to long security lines, it’s often because they didn’t plan sufficiently, and were unrealistic. For example, if you show up at the airport 40 minutes before departure and then miss your flight due to long security lines, it’s hard to feel too bad.

However, that’s not at all what happened here. The traveler showed up over two hours before departure with just carry-on bags, and that’s as early as anyone could possibly expect to arrive at the airport for a flight, short of some extraordinary event that the airline warned people about.

I don’t know what happened here that caused these long lines, but this definitely seems out of the ordinary, and not like something that’s acceptable. If these lines are going to be so bad, it also seems like the airline should’ve warned people in advance of the possibility of that.

I think that also leads to the frustrating lack of accountability here. Admittedly an airline can’t be responsible for long security lines, so the airline wouldn’t be on the hook for paying for things like EC261 compensation, since this is fully outside of a carrier’s control.

However, both the airline and airport are run by the government, and as I see it, the real issue here is how European airlines generally have a policy that if you miss a flight, you have to pay for a new ticket.

It seems borderline unethical for a carrier’s hub airport to have unacceptably long security lines, and for the airline to then charge passengers to rebook if they miss their flight. It’s one of the ways that aviation in Europe is very punitive, as it’s not like the United States, where you’re typically just put on standby for the next flight if you miss the one you’re booked on.

I totally agree with this reader that he didn’t do anything wrong, and it’s not unreasonable that he feels he’s owed something. As he concludes, though, he’s correct that this is one of those situations that reflects just how one-sided airline contracts of carriage are.

Airlines are rarely generous beyond their published contract of carriage, especially for customer service after the fact. So this might be one of those rare situations where I’m not sure there’s any good recourse, I don’t have any advice, and I also am not sure what the lesson is. I certainly wouldn’t recommend showing up well over two hours early for a typical flight from Europe, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

So do we just put this in the category of “if you travel enough things sometimes go wrong, and there’s nothing we can do about it?” Or is there another lesson?

Bottom line

A TAP Air Portugal passenger missed his flight due to very long security lines at Lisbon Airport. That’s super frustrating, since it’s not like he was cutting it close, so this could’ve happened to any reasonable person. While it’s frustrating to miss your flight in this situation to begin with, what makes it even worse is that he was forced to buy another ticket, since European carriers don’t generally just roll your ticket over to the next flight.

Is there any good advice that I’m missing, or what do you make of this situation?