passing

Chaos erupted as British passengers were left stranded at Linate airport in Milan due to huge delays at border control meaning they missed their flight back to Manchester

easyJet passengers were ‘close to passing out’ after being left in the heat as their flight left to Manchester without them due to border control chaos.

About 100 people have been left stranded in Milan on Sunday, April 12 after facing up to three hour queues at Milan’s Linate airport because of new border control checks.

As well as concerns over how to get home, many passengers were left vomiting and passing out due to the heat, according to the BBC.

easyJet said it was working to support passengers but that the situation was “outside of our control”.

Large queues formed at the international airport causing mayhem.

Pictures and videos shared online showed scenes of mayhem as large queues formed at the international airport.

The carnage comes after the UK government updated its guidance to people travelling to the European Schengen area, meaning they may have to register biometric details when they arrive.

The implementation of the EU entry and exit system (EES) is an electronic system that replaces the physical stamping of passports when going through boarding control.

The airline said that it held the plane for almost an hour extra, but eventually had to depart due to crew working hours.

Passengers have been left disappointed after arriving at the airport in plenty of time and now facing huge delays to return home.

Emily Benn, from Grimsby, was travelling with five others on the 11am flight. Her new flight will now go to Gatwick rather than Manchester, meaning a £400 taxi fare on arrival.

She told the M.E.N: “We got to the airport at 8am and our flight was due to leave Milan Linate at 11am. As soon as our gate came on the board, we went straight to it and there was already a huge queue.

“The queue was for three separate flights, and there were hundreds of passengers all trying to get through. The new EES wasn’t working, so we all had to be checked by two people on passport control.

“It got to 11:20am and we were told the flight had left without us. They put us all on a shuttle bus and sent us back to the arrivals area, where we had to go back to the easyJet desk.

“We were told to rebook flights, so have booked to Gatwick and will then pay £400 for a taxi back to Manchester as that’s where our car is parked. We are a party of five adults and one child, who is due to have spinal surgery in a few days.”

Other passengers shared the ‘nightmare’ experience on social media. One posted: “What a nightmare!

“You abandoned me and 122 other passengers in Milan. You flew to Manchester with 34 onboard.

“We queued for three hours and all the time the flight info remained at ‘boarding’ we were then told the delayed flight had left.”

An easyJet spokesperson said: “We are aware that some passengers departing from Milan Linate today experienced longer than usual waiting times at passport control and we advised customers due to fly to allow additional time to make their way through the airport.

“We held flight EJU5420 from Milan to Manchester for nearly an hour to give passengers extra time but it had to then depart due to crew reaching their safety regulated operating hours. Customers who missed the flight have been offered a free flight transfer.

“We continue to urge border authorities to ensure they make full and effective use of the permitted flexibilities for as long as needed while EES is implemented, to avoid these unacceptable border delays for our customers. While this is outside of our control, we are sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

Sacramento

Frustrated by his fellow Republicans in the state Senate, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally is starting to come around — coming around to the recognition that California’s daunting budget hurdle is destructive and dopey.

California is one of only three states — the others being Arkansas and Rhode Island — that require a supermajority legislative vote for passage of a budget. California mandates a two-thirds majority, an inanity given that a 60% vote in elections is considered a landslide.

Republicans — almost always comprising the legislative minority in California — have staunchly defended the two-thirds requirement, contending that it’s what makes them relevant. But too often it makes the entire Legislature look ridiculous.

Every state but California has enacted a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1. California has missed the deadline for 17 of the last 21 years. If the stalemate continues, it “could raise credit concerns,” the bond-rating agency Standard & Poor’s warned Friday.

Because no budget has been passed, some companies that do business with the state are being stiffed. The state has withheld more than $3 billion in payments to vendors, hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, child-care centers, community colleges. . . .

Call it tyranny by the minority in the Legislature.

Schwarzenegger isn’t exactly calling it that, nor calling for the two-thirds vote to be scuttled. But he did take a significant step in that direction last week at a money-strapped adult healthcare center in Santa Maria. There, the governor praised one Republican — local Sen. Abel Maldonado — for being an “extraordinary leader” and breaking party ranks to vote for the budget. Schwarzenegger also tried to generate public pressure on the 14 other GOP senators to follow suit.

The governor was asked why Sacramento can’t ever seem to get its budget work done on time.

“Yes, we have had this mess, as you know, for decades,” Schwarzenegger replied. “I think that everyone now has come to the conclusion — all the leaders — that we must work, as soon as the budget is over, on a system that allows us to have a budget on time.

“If that means we should go and shoot for, as some suggested, a simple majority to pass the budget rather than a two-thirds vote, maybe that’s the solution.”

Schwarzenegger also mentioned an idea that he said former President Clinton gave him. In Arkansas, when Clinton was governor, he and the Legislature agreed on a program priority list. When the state fell short of money, the lowest priority programs automatically were cut.

“It’s all laid out . . . so there’s no fight over it,” Schwarzenegger said.

There would be in California, I suspect. The Legislature is in session much longer, and there are many interest groups with squeaky wheels.

Gubernatorial spokesman Adam Mendelsohn downplayed Schwarzenegger’s seeming tilt toward a simple-majority budget vote.

“He’s just encouraging debate,” Mendelsohn said. “He’s saying everything’s up for debate. . . . It’s frustrating for him to watch the Legislature fail to do its job.”

Actually, the Assembly did pass a $146-billion bipartisan budget with Republican support. It’s only in the Senate that the spending proposal has been blocked by Republicans demanding deeper cuts.

Senate GOP leader Dick Ackerman of Irvine echoes most Republicans in contending that eliminating the two-thirds vote requirement could lead to a taxpayers’ disaster if Democrats controlled both the legislative and executive branches, as they did when Gray Davis was governor.

“Think back,” he says, “if we hadn’t had the two-thirds vote to stop tax increases.”

That typical thinking assumes the two-thirds vote requirement for a tax hike also would be scrubbed. It should be. Lawmakers illogically are allowed to cut taxes with a majority vote but need two-thirds to raise them. The state can go bankrupt just as fast lowering taxes as it can increasing spending, and proved that during the Davis days.

But for the sake of punctual budgets, let’s forget the tax vote. Keep it at two-thirds and merely lower the budget vote.

That gets the support of the Legislature’s most fiscally conservative member, veteran Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks).

Let the majority party rule and be accountable for the consequences, McClintock says. Give ‘em the rope to hang themselves. And with a two-thirds vote still required for tax hikes, he notes, “spending can’t run away.”

The budget two-thirds vote was enacted in 1933 during the Depression. The idea was to hold down spending. It never really worked.

A decade ago, a bipartisan citizens budget commission found that “the vast majority of states that have simple-majority requirements have weathered their budgetary crises more effectively than California. None of these states have produced deficit spending remotely close to California’s.”

The panel concluded: “There is no evidence [the two-thirds vote] does anything to slow the increase in state spending. Instead, it encourages horse trading [and] pork-barrel legislation. . . . Stories abound of ‘buying’ votes to reach the two-thirds.”

McClintock agrees. Normally, he says, “there are a few morally flexible members of the minority party who are bought off with promises of all sorts of lard for their districts.”

This summer, the Senate GOP has been trying to sell its budget votes for legislation crimping Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown’s ability to block public works projects that don’t control greenhouse gases. This is shaping up as the grand compromise on the budget. Schwarzenegger and McClintock both consider it a good cause, but neither think it should have held up the budget.

“I don’t believe in tying unrelated subjects to any measure,” McClintock says.

But that’s the sort of tawdry horse trading that comes with a nutty two-thirds vote rule — a rule too often abused, as Schwarzenegger is finding.

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george.skelton@latimes.com