Is the second BP scan at T5 Fast Track Security a stats scam?
After arriving off a European flight on Saturday I decided to forgo connections and use the e-Passport gates and head up to departures. This meant going through the "new" Fast Track security lanes at T5 South. You scan your BP for entry and about 5m after that there is another (normally optional) BP scanner. It takes around 5 seconds to walk between the entry gate and this scanner.
The chap here gestured for me to scan my BP at this reader. I told him I didn't really want to do that because I know they are just for passenger tracking purposes. It got me thinking, are HAL trying to pull a scam here? What will this data actually show? It takes 5 seconds to walk 5m to the second scanner? Wow. It certainly doesn't take 5 seconds to get through security.
In fact, as per my luck after unpacking my stuff up the infamous scanning chair was empty. Nothing moved for 5 minutes. Something I face consistently at North "Fast Track" when connecting. Even there the whole BP thing is a scam. They want you to scan the BP (but I have never been asked to do it) to gather data on how long it took you to get between the scan downstairs and upstairs to security. But what does it really show? Why not have the completely voluntarily scan AFTER security to truly show the picture of how long it takes. The figures are completely skewed with the current system in place because inevitably after that data capture the queue doesn't move, minutes are wasted that are not being recorded skewing the overall picture.
I have not looked into this in any great depth but I can see no other way that HAL can be tracking the time taken for security except for these two data captures. It's years since they used to hand out bits of coloured paper which tracked the time taken and even then it was collected after security.
Of course, nothing is quite as ridiculous as the current set up at new Fast Track. All passengers take only 5 seconds and data capture is encouraged, practically enforced by the way I was asked. What else can the data represent? Am I missing something?