Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: HEL
Programs: AY Platinum, TK Elite, BT VIP, AA, BA, SK, DL, NT, WB + hotels
Posts: 8,756
My passport was issued in January this year, and in March, I did not get through the automated gates at LHR.
Arriving from HEL, there were quite a few of us Finns who had problems with the gates. Still, the agents wanted me to try two different gates before relenting. I dislike automated gates since even when working, they are so much slower than a human. But at LHR, you don't really have a choice – either you queue with all the Indians and Pakistanis, which takes forever, or then you queue to the e-gates, play with them for a while to make the agents happy and then get to see a human being.