Many countries heavily fine airlines for carrying pax who don't have the right visa/etc, so it's not unreasonable for them to have to keep track of that - but the rest of the world manages to do this without taking fingerprints.

My first instinct is that I might be willing to tolerate a retina scan for this kind of thing - because you can't capture one at a distrance or without somebody knowing (in norma circumstances) and you don't leave a trail of retinal scans around behind you wherever you go.

Same for me; I don't believe that MI5 or special branch or whoever won't be able to get hold of the fingerprints, and then keep them forever. If BA deploy this, I'll be switching to Virgin.

And FWIW this is quite different from using biometrics to verify that a person attempting to enter a country is the same person to who a visa was issued. While I have strong reservations about fingerprinting for that purpose, retina scans ougft to be entirely acceptable.

On the one hand, there is the argument that the big brother cameras don't do something that a human observer couldn't do. However, firstly that argument is wrong - camera images can be archived, and searched forever after (think about that for a minute - in the not too distant future, some cop will likley be able to pick out your face and get a record of everwhere you went, every time you were within view of a camera - over your whole life !). And secondly, if we put a human snoop everywhere there was a camera, people would realize that they were living in an orwellian society, and would probably not put up with it.

Next time I'm in London I've resolved to wear a kato mask and cover my ears (ears are generally reckoned to be one of the most recognizable facial features) the whole time.