The Juan Santamaria International Airport in Costa Rica will increase the number of Migration control counters from 8 to 14 to speed up the process for passengers leaving the country.

In the past few months travelers have faced long lines when exiting the country after the new migration system was implemented. In the past passengers filled in a paper form, and the process of checking the passport and verifying the information for each passenger was done internally after the passenger had checked in, now, all this is done at the counter using the new system.

The last system failure occurred on January 3rd when the system went down for 30m minutes at around 11 a.m. a peak hour at the airport and during high season, eventually the area was packed with over 1500 people in an area that usually has a capacity for around 400.

The number of Migration officials will also increase within the next month and a half in both the Daniel Oduber (Guanacaste) and Juan Santamaria Airports.

In the past couple of days the airports also had long lines in migration control of incoming passengers; however according to airport authorities these lines were the result of heavy traffic after the cancellation of flights early in the week due to the winter storm in North America.