Flying back to the UK? Soon your face will be your passport - The Times
Britons will no longer need to show their passports when flying back into UK airports because upgraded facial recognition technology is being introduced at e-gates.
The new “contactless borders”, which are expected to significantly reduce queues, will be introduced at Birmingham and East Midlands airports in the coming weeks.
All e-gates, which are in operation at Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Gatwick, Glasgow, Heathrow, London City, Luton, Manchester, Newcastle and Stansted airports, will have the upgraded system by early next year. Returning passengers who use the e-gates and have their face captured on camera will not have to scan their passport.
Phil Douglas, the director general of Border Force, said: “It will mean we have a more secure border and a much faster transit through the airport. It’s quicker, it’s more modern, it’s more secure.”
Passengers will still need to travel with their passport because it will be needed to check in and to board the plane.
Initially, the new system will only work for British passport holders, but the aim is to extend it to other nationalities who are allowed to use e-gates, currently those with biometric passports from Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the US.
Douglas said contactless gates could speed up border control by up to 25 per cent. The current process typically takes 20-25 seconds, although many people take longer because of problems such as failing to place their passports correctly in the machine, or the chip on their passport being dirty and therefore unreadable.
Under the new system, a gallery of the passport photos of British passengers arriving that day will be transmitted by each airline to Border Control at each airport and then collated for the e-gates to refer to. Douglas said: “Because we know who’s coming and can load up that gallery of who is arriving, it’s not a one in 60 million check, it’s a one in tens of thousands check [because the system only needs to check against the passports of passengers travelling on that particular day].”
If the passenger’s face is not recognised by the e-gate they will be asked to scan their passport. If that fails, they will be directed to a Border Force officer at a manned desk.
The technology had a successful three-week trial at Manchester airport in October last year. The Home Office said passengers typically passed through the gates faster and had a better experience.
Passenger numbers are increasing every year. The Civil Aviation Authority reported in May that numbers hit a record in the first quarter of this year when more than 61 million passengers travelled through UK airports.
Introduced in 2008, the e-gates were supplied by VisionBox, a biometrics and border control company, which is now part of Amadeus, a Spanish travel technology firm.
Since July 8, children aged eight and above who are at least 120cm tall have been able to use the e-gates. They will be able to use the new system too. Previously, children had to be ten to use them.
Douglas said: “When we opened the e-gates for eight-year-olds, we wondered if they were going to be able to do it. The funny thing was that the user error rate was much lower than for older passengers.”
The e-gates will be upgraded to incorporate the new facial recognition software.
The introduction of contactless borders means Britain is leading the way in Europe. In Dubai, up to 50 nationalities can use facial recognition technology and in Australia it is already incorporated into the border control process.
“We are doing this for reasons of border security,” Douglas said. “And it also means our workforce will be able to pivot from doing routine immigration to crime, safeguarding, drugs — officers are going to be much more mobile.” He added: “There’s something quite important still about what I call the theatre of the border, that there is a border and that you’re being checked. It gives a public reassurance that our borders are secure.”
Douglas who began his career as an immigration officer in 1992, said the new system “feels like a really personal thing”, adding: “I’m committed to border security and I think it’s really important that people who come to the UK have a good experience coming through immigration. Waiting in a two-hour queue is not acceptable.”
