Isabel Oneto, the Assistant Secretary of Home Affairs, told Lusa that three more e-gates (electronic gates for reading biometric passport data) are planned along with two more manual gates in the new arrivals area by the end of September, beginning of October".

At the beginning of the month ANA, Portugal’s Airports Authority explained that a "specific area was planned for the arrival of flights from safe origins, whose controls are faster.

In total, the Foreigners and Borders Service (SEF) will acquire 49 new generation e-gates "with a faster and more functional operating system able to process passports with biometric data more quickly", added the secretary of state.

16 more gates are planned at Faro airport, 10 in Funchal, and one in Porto.

Isabel Oneto welcomed the reduction in waiting times for passengers to pass through airport passport controls, saying that this was due to an increase in SEF staffing levels.

"These are the best waiting times since records began. In July the average waiting time for passengers was less than 10 minutes both at the entrances and exits," she stressed.

In the first six months of the year, SEF has already controlled more than eight million passengers, which represents an increase of 10.9% over the same period of 2018.