Rome Fiumicino airport: what happens to the gates? What controls are there?

Fiumicino airport, controls against the Omicron variant increase.

With the arrival of the Omicron variant, yet another tightening of the controls at Rome Fiumicino airport took place. For two years now in the main Italian airport, the pandemic has modified – and complicated – the entire passenger monitoring machine.

As soon as you arrive at the main Rome airport, your outline appears on one of the over one hundred thermoscanners installed by Aeroporti di Roma. A possible fever line marks the boundary between boarding or stopping.

“Police checks on intermediate stopovers at Fiumicino airport, chosen by some passengers to circumvent the blocking of flights from countries at risk and new obligations slow down operations at the gates”

rome-airport.net

The anti-Covid blockade, however, is just ahead: the passport control area for landed travelers. Twenty stations in the heart of Terminal 3, managed by the border police. The last garrison before entering Italy. All to make the process more agile, and ever faster and more electronic; in theory, just a minute through the e-gates, the passages on which to place the travel document and then exit …. But the global epidemic has changed everything. Now, on many fronts, the card has regained its space and the control operations of the police, at times, are slowed down.

Now at Rome Fiumicino airport it is not uncommon to run into two hours in a row after an international flight. A criticality that can occur due to several concomitant factors. And the alarm for the mutation of the virus is just yet another obstacle. Self-certifications, results of the swabs and green pass, is part of the documentation that the agents of Rome Fiumicino find themselves leafing through the windows of the passport area: each country has a different rule, for many the PLF (the Passenger locator form) is valid. of location which is also used for tracking (contact tracing) of the traveler in case of infections.

The critical point at FCO airport is between 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM, explain the agents intent on monitoring the latest tourists arriving from Dubai. The queues often get longer due to the coincidence of intercontinental flights from Southeast Asia and the United Arab Emirates: routes at risk also for triangulations.

The blocking of flights from African countries due to the Omicron variant can in fact be circumvented with stopovers in other countries that are not subject to restrictions. For this reason, the reconstruction of the trips by the Polaria (the Fiumicino airport border police) has become more complex. At each critical time, those with more scheduled flights arriving, there is a synchronized number of employees, as long as there are no delays on the scheduled connections.

At night, for example, four operators are employed, an average of fifteen on duty during the day, but without counting absences due to illness or vaccinations, just as happens in these weeks with third doses of vaccine.

The lines thus double and the wait at the time of the pandemic becomes suffocating between mask and crowd.