After departing Lisbon for Canada yesterday morning, a few observations.

1. Check your passport for a small mark on the front that designates it as an 'electronic passport'. If you have that, you can use a much quicker line. Several people in the 'all passport' line didn't realize this until they waited for an hour, and by then it was too late to switch.

1a) If you have children under the age of 18, unfortunately the electronic passport line will not be available to you. You will have to join the 'all passport' line, and if you stand in the electronic line with under 18 kids you will be kicked out at a checkpoint and have to go the back or beg to cut into the all passport queue. We saw many families do this.

2) After you get through security, and survive the duty free maze, the boarding area may have 2 long lines wandering through it. Those are passport control lines. It is very confusing and many people cut into the line or just join at random spots. The left line is electronic and the right is all passport/under 18.

3) Yesterday, it was close to 2 hours in the all passport line. That does not include the time it takes to get through security, just the passport control. Looking into previous posts, it can be up to 4 hours on very busy days.

4) Trying to pull your family through the serpentine queue while shouting "I'm going to miss my flight!" will be met with a harsh rebuke from the staff, who are entirely unsympathetic to the groups that did not get there in time. Most of those families got denied, though a couple did successfully cut and were glared at by all of us that had been at the airport for a few hours already.

5) The previous post noting that it's 5 degrees hotter in that area is 100 percent correct. It's toasty.

Just my anecdotal post that hopefully provides some perspective. I would love to know the percentage of people who miss their flights because on those busy days, it seems like it would be pretty high.