European airports with fast passport scanning control

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Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 50 total)
  • Twice in the past few weeks I have been in transit at LHR T1 connecting from International to Domestic. On both occasions I had enough time to go landside but the e-gates did not accept my passport. No big deal but this never happens at T5 (at least to me).

    T1 is really showing its age. Yesterday at lunch the jetty was flooded on arrival. Add to that closed shops and a huge reduction in the number of flights and the place just looks forlorn.


    ChrisHurrey
    Participant

    Alexpo – it might well be because the T5 gates are newer than the T1 devices. I am still intrigued to know why they failed to let you through. Did the failure occur at the passport scanning stage or at the face matching stage? I know it’s a bit hard to tell, but any info gratefully received and, as said earlier, I’ll feed it back to the system admin people.


    batterytraveller
    Participant

    In my limited experience (UK passport holder) Australia e-gates are much faster than British ones and on a limited sample fail to identify me less often than UK ones. This may be due to the fact that you have to visit another kiosk at some stage between the plane and passport control to answer immigration questions. The kiosks may allow the system to do some kind of pre processing, or caching of relevant data than makes the gates operate more quickly. Might be worth investigating.


    ChrisHurrey
    Participant

    The Australian and New Zealand ‘Smartgate’ systems work in a slightly different way to the European e-Gates and are essentially a two-step process, making the actual face-matching at the e-Gate a bit faster, though the ‘enrolment’ and customs declaration step takes up time. It might be that the face-matching threshold (the point on the scale at which the system decides to accept or reject) are set differently between systems. It could also be that the photos in some passports are not of good enough quality to allow a good match.


    DavidGordon10
    Participant

    ChrisHurrey – if you were responsible for the IRIS system, congratulations. It worked a treat. Pity to lose it.


    ChrisHurrey
    Participant

    David – Thanks. Technically it worked very well and it was one of the first genuinely automated border control (ABC) systems – and even did not require the use of a passport – but the business model was not quite right and so it was withdrawn. I have one of the engraved glass doors as a souvenir!

    Hello ChrisHurrey

    I think I may have an answer. I am in transit again at T1 and when the e-gate directed me once more to the adjacent manned desk I asked why this kept happening. The immigration officer’s reply was my chipped passport was no longer chipped!!

    I have had this passport for almost 8 years so perhaps it needs a new or upgraded chip lol

    Will be in transit again here this weekend from international to international with almost 4 hours to spare…I think I will be joining the normal Q.


    MartynSinclair
    Participant

    Frankfurt is having problems with E Gates.. for the 4th Sunday E Gates in T2 were shut, due to staff shortages….


    ChrisHurrey
    Participant

    The RFID chip in the passport can get damaged (for example the copper antenna can get disconnected) and no one is really sure how often they last when used in a passport. If the chip is broken then obviously no data can be retrieved from it and the Border Officer can confirm this.

    Also, at times of peak pressure, the Border Officers are used on the manual control. Not quite the idea, but needs must!

    I shall be visiting the Frankfurt system next month and can ask the admin people about outages. If it’s anything I can reveal I’ll post it on this forum.


    TerryMcManus24
    Participant

    Be back through T4 in a couple of weeks time so will dig out my secret spy watch with night vision camera and see if I get through the E-gates this time without incident…..

    IRIS was great..never had a problem..


    ChrisHurrey
    Participant

    Terry – if you’re feeling geekish, I’d be grateful if you would try to time the transaction from putting your passport on the reader to the gate opening to let you pass. Average time is 18 seconds but I’ve managed it 14 seconds with Heathrow’s new gates.


    ChrisHurrey
    Participant

    Terry – if you’re feeling geekish, I’d be grateful if you would try to time the transaction from putting your passport on the reader to the gate opening to let you pass. Average time is 18 seconds but I’ve managed it 14 seconds with Heathrow’s new gates.


    ChrisHurrey
    Participant

    Terry – if you’re feeling geekish, I’d be grateful if you would try to time the transaction from putting your passport on the reader to the gate opening to let you pass. Average time is 18 seconds but I’ve managed it 14 seconds with Heathrow’s new gates.


    StephenLondon
    Participant

    ChrisHurrey, thanks for coming along and supporting the frequent travellers on this site. It is much appreciated.

    IRIS was a terrific programme and should, in my opinion, still be in use! I miss it. So do many of my friends who have ILR in the UK, but now are back queuing with the masses. I have heard from them that UK Borders are considering extending e-gates to those with ILR, which would be a boon.

    I went through LCY yesterday, and they have new e-Gates. It certainly took much of the pressure off the Border Force agents, who could (perhaps rightly) concentrate on those coming in from abroad with new visas or needed extended discussion about their entry into the UK. Some of the passengers had problems using the eGates, but for the most part, they went through fairly quickly.


    CXDiamond
    Participant

    ChrisHurrey thank you for your input.

    Martyn kindly directed me to this thread after another post I made seeking help.

    So far most of my experiences of using e-gates have been painless with one exception which is LHR T2. Since it opened I’ve been through there about six times and on each occasion my passport has been rejected by the e-gates while it is accepted in all the other terminals.

    I most recently came through last Friday and while chatting to someone I was told that the e-gates are rejecting about 70% of passports but nothing is being done about this. Certainly the number of people I saw fail to get through was significant.

    Do you know, is there an issue in T2 and is it being addressed? If not, have you any ideas why my passport should keep being rejected? It’s only a couple of years old and hasn’t had anything go wrong with it and no problems anywhere else.

    Thanks for any help.

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