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I've just come back from holiday via Heathrow - having had my original flights cancelled by BA at the last minute. The experience of getting back through passp

I've just come back from holiday via Heathrow - having had my original flights cancelled by BA at the last minute. The experience of getting back through passport control was pretty bad - took about an hour, with the usual combination of poor queue management, useless e-gates and only 2 passport control staff initially on duty to take those who the e-gates failed for (which was about 50%, and always happens to me as I have a common name so there are always people wanted with my name, according to local passport officers). It certainly wasn't this bad last time I flew via there (pre-pandemic, I'm not a regular flier), but something needs to be done, for sure.

cm2187 4y ago
At what time of the day, day of the week?
KptMarchewa 4y ago
Those e-gates really suck always. What's so hard about reading MRZ?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- traceroute66 4y ago
  > Those e-gates really suck always. What's so hard about reading MRZ? Its because its not fully-automated. If you keep an eye out, you'll spot an officer sitting in a booth with a couple of LCD screens. They are actually touch screens showing a grid of mugshots of the people passing through the gates. Officer needs to tap his finger on your mugshot to open the gate. Hence if its a busy day, or the officer is eating a donut, you'll get the sucky delay experience. Obviously there is little public information available, but there is one public document that makes some vague hints about what a "Monitoring Officer" does, including a reference about requiring being logged into a "Monitoring Terminal". See here[1]. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1045688/An_inspection_of_ePassport_gates_June_2020_to_January_2021.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
  - iso1631 4y ago
    A decade ago Heathrow had IRIS entry at passport control. You had to register, and in theory had to use heathrow a lot to get on the list. It was great, walk in, no need to fish out a passport, 5 seconds later you walked through, and because it was frequent flyers only you didn't have grandma still wearing sunglasses, or dropping her passport, or putting her boarding card in, etc. I measured the "e-passport" queue at Paris last time I got the train to London. There were 5 gates, on average each one took 45 seconds to process someone, the fastest being 31 seconds, the slowest over a minute before rejecting them That's 1 person every 9 seconds, or 400 per hour. The hourly train has 900 seats. That simply doesn't work.
    - WildGreenLeave 4y ago
      This IRIS entry is the same with Privium in Schiphol (which, as of this time is not accepting people). But, what I don't understand, why the hate on the e passport gates? I really like them at Schiphol. There are usually about 8 of them and in my experience there are always more egates open then actual officers. And they are on par or faster than an officer. Could it be more efficient? yes. But, if the alternative is an old fashioned officer this is better.
      - iso1631 4y ago
        Two aspects 1) People don't like them when they total throughput turns out to be less than before, which tends to be the case - especially when people notice them. This is quite common as they often replace 1 passport officer with 1 e-passport machine. 2) As a user they are more difficult to use, and no faster. For me, manual passport control into my home country involves dropping my passport on the desk with one hand, standing for 20 seconds, then leaving. For e-gates it means opening it up (usually a two handed process), sliding into a reader, making sure the crinkly passport bit doesn't scrunch up, wait, wait, wait, half the time get told to reinsert, wait again, look at a camera, wait, wait, then about 1 in 4 times get rejected and have to do the manual process 3) For the minority of people who had iris, they replaced a system which was better for the user in all ways Iris itself was of course a security issue - it was no longer something you have + something you are, it was just something you are, which was the beauty. Have too many people on the system and you get false positives and end up with a tremendous mess Of course the best innovation in passport control in the UK would be to join Schengen, so we don't need passport control for the majority of arrivals into the UK. Would save a fortune and make everyones lives easier.
- zo1 4y ago
  It's split second to read. It's all the other stuff they are potentially mandated to do. Checking no fly lists, police databases, taking scans of your photo for storage. Having crazy expensive SDKs that run "tests" on you passport to check that it's according to your country's specific passport format and unique fraud checks. Some run UV scans, etc.

cm2187 4y ago

At what time of the day, day of the week?

KptMarchewa 4y ago

Those e-gates really suck always. What's so hard about reading MRZ?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
traceroute66 4y ago
> Those e-gates really suck always. What's so hard about reading MRZ? Its because its not fully-automated. If you keep an eye out, you'll spot an officer sitting in a booth with a couple of LCD screens. They are actually touch screens showing a grid of mugshots of the people passing through the gates. Officer needs to tap his finger on your mugshot to open the gate. Hence if its a busy day, or the officer is eating a donut, you'll get the sucky delay experience. Obviously there is little public information available, but there is one public document that makes some vague hints about what a "Monitoring Officer" does, including a reference about requiring being logged into a "Monitoring Terminal". See here[1]. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1045688/An_inspection_of_ePassport_gates_June_2020_to_January_2021.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- iso1631 4y ago
  A decade ago Heathrow had IRIS entry at passport control. You had to register, and in theory had to use heathrow a lot to get on the list. It was great, walk in, no need to fish out a passport, 5 seconds later you walked through, and because it was frequent flyers only you didn't have grandma still wearing sunglasses, or dropping her passport, or putting her boarding card in, etc. I measured the "e-passport" queue at Paris last time I got the train to London. There were 5 gates, on average each one took 45 seconds to process someone, the fastest being 31 seconds, the slowest over a minute before rejecting them That's 1 person every 9 seconds, or 400 per hour. The hourly train has 900 seats. That simply doesn't work.
  - WildGreenLeave 4y ago
    This IRIS entry is the same with Privium in Schiphol (which, as of this time is not accepting people). But, what I don't understand, why the hate on the e passport gates? I really like them at Schiphol. There are usually about 8 of them and in my experience there are always more egates open then actual officers. And they are on par or faster than an officer. Could it be more efficient? yes. But, if the alternative is an old fashioned officer this is better.
    - iso1631 4y ago
      Two aspects 1) People don't like them when they total throughput turns out to be less than before, which tends to be the case - especially when people notice them. This is quite common as they often replace 1 passport officer with 1 e-passport machine. 2) As a user they are more difficult to use, and no faster. For me, manual passport control into my home country involves dropping my passport on the desk with one hand, standing for 20 seconds, then leaving. For e-gates it means opening it up (usually a two handed process), sliding into a reader, making sure the crinkly passport bit doesn't scrunch up, wait, wait, wait, half the time get told to reinsert, wait again, look at a camera, wait, wait, then about 1 in 4 times get rejected and have to do the manual process 3) For the minority of people who had iris, they replaced a system which was better for the user in all ways Iris itself was of course a security issue - it was no longer something you have + something you are, it was just something you are, which was the beauty. Have too many people on the system and you get false positives and end up with a tremendous mess Of course the best innovation in passport control in the UK would be to join Schengen, so we don't need passport control for the majority of arrivals into the UK. Would save a fortune and make everyones lives easier.
zo1 4y ago
It's split second to read. It's all the other stuff they are potentially mandated to do. Checking no fly lists, police databases, taking scans of your photo for storage. Having crazy expensive SDKs that run "tests" on you passport to check that it's according to your country's specific passport format and unique fraud checks. Some run UV scans, etc.