Originally Posted by
xxxxx
The system wasn't behaving badly, just doing what it was designed to do.
For flights to the US your passport must have been swiped which is a US govt rule, the CIK at EDI would have done this for you.
On all longhaul flights plus 4 shorthaul destinations, before you can go through in to the departure lounge a BA member of staff must "tick a box" to say that your passport meets the requirements for entering the country you're travelling to. This is one of the 7 conformance checks. (Flight operating, correct terminal, passenger has enough time, visa/passport check OK, APIS in booking, government/regulatory checks OK and passenger has seat) This means that at the gate the agent will check that you match your passport only and won't even check the validity, its known as clean boarding.
I would always recommend you get this done at the outstation.
Some people become incredibly rude when they are asked for their passport to be checked at the domestic FCC.
Whilst rudeness is not on, it is understandable that a transfer pax might get just a bit ticked off after the outstation SSCI kiosk scanned their machine readable passport and confirmed validation. BA advises passengers when checking in at domestic outstations only to use the manned desks when directed to by its automated systems so I suspect the system broke down somewhere the morning of my travel, as TBS replicated the same actions (and incidentally on the same route) as I did but on a different day. He managed to pass through to T5 without the need for a BA member of staff manually checking his passport.
I am happy to side step the system and present my passport for manual checking at the outstation bag drop desk in future - but it is a belt and braces approach don't you think?