MIA increases arrivals processing desks in bid to reduce waiting times

Public Health personnel will be manning an increased number of processing desks within the arrivals lounge at Malta International Airport, up from eight to 22, as the airport gears up for a busy weekend, during which peaks of up to 1,100 simultaneously arriving passengers are expected, MaltaToday has learned.

In the past weekends, photos have surfaced of long queues of people waiting for hours to clear arrivals.

It was only last week that health authorities decided to recognize digital versions of documents required for entry into Malta.

However, the queues are mostly caused by numerous passengers arriving in Malta with missing or paper-based documents, necessitating manual verification by public health representatives. For the past few weeks, MIA has been appealing to prospective travellers for their cooperation by presenting and submitting the required entry documents digitally whenever possible.

Arriving passengers must complete a digital Passenger Locator Form (PLF), where they must provide details of their permanent address in their country of residence and the temporary address where they will be staying in Malta, as well as flight details.

This form must be presented together with a negative result of a COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test taken not later than 72 hours before arriving in Malta or a valid vaccination certificate. Malta currently recognises the Malta Vaccine Certificate, the United Kingdom NHS COVID Pass in digital or paper format and the EU’s Digital COVID Certificate.

Sources at the airport said that the biggest issue was that platform being used to verify and record arrivals’ COVID details lacked the necessary automation.

In fact, there was not even one system to process the PLFs and the COVID certificates, with public health staff having to switch between systems while processing every passenger arriving in Malta.

“This is not a matter of scanning a barcode and moving on, that would indeed by ideal,” the sources said. “Instead we have to switch between different systems and process the PLFs and Covid certificates separately, resulting in longer waiting times at arrival.”

Malta only accepts certificates if they indicate that vaccination has been received in full and if at least 14 days have passed from the administration of the last dose.