Airport could be Brexit bottleneck for Customs

The infrastructure at the airport arrivals lounge is the most worrying aspect of Brexit for the director general of the Customs Department, with most of the other bases already well covered. The department has been slowly but surely building up its resources over the past few years, with the priority being the creation of an IT system that could handle the extra workload at the ports. But with 12 flights arriving and 12 leaving every day from the UK on average – each with 160 people on board – that will put considerable pressure on the red and green Customs gates, as they will no longer be entitled to use the blue channel and will have to indicate whether they have anything to declare. “And that is the average over the whole year. There are periods in summer when there might be three times that amount!” director-general Joseph Chetcuti said. Negotiations are already underway with Malta International Airport on ways to avoid the fear of queues that are giving Mr Chetcuti headaches.  “This is a commercial entity, which has to consider every centimetre to generate revenue,” he admitted.  “But I envisage that we would need another red and another green channel.” There are other...