Anyone else have issues at the T5 passport E-Gates?
 

Firstly mods please don't move this it's BA related because I only experience this at T5.

So everyone without fail. I approach the E-Gates in T5 when I come off an international flight and without fail I put the passport in and it shows the spinning disc for 2p seconds or so and just goes straight to "Seek Assistance" this only happens at the T5 gates and I end up having to go to the border force agent.

Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me? Is there something wrong with my passport? Works fine at every other airport with automated terminals although t5 is the only one in the UK. It's a UK passport.

Should I contact border force or is the machine just not like me?

On a side note did my first priority boarding via electronic gate on LHR to GLA and worked no problem and was pretty efficient.

Busted chip in your passport?

I've got a 50% hit rate with the e-gates at GLA & LHR.

S

If it was quick to reject it suggests the technique is wrong. Are you holding the photo page down on the patten with a flat palm? "Tenting" is the quickest way to a reject message. Some places (e.g. Belgium) swallow the passport so that it's difficult to get it wrong, albeit at the risk of nipping your fingers.

There's no problem asking the UKBF officer if the chip is ok, s/he is supposed to volunteer the fact, or even seize the passport if it has certain sorts of defects. Their scanner is essentially the same as the e-gate machine.

GLA has the same gates if arriving there internationally.

[50% = beard, gender reassignment or technique, they aren't that temperamental!]

Was there not a forum thread on this some time ago? Faulty passport batch or something? And that at T5 sometimes it's best to give when holding passport in the scan area a bit more pressure by hand than normal? Just seem to recall that. Sorry if off track on that..

See some similar comments here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...-t5-lhr-8.html

This happened to me every time without fail for a while until I realised the DOB saved in my APIS profile was wrong and did not match my passport (obviously). It has worked consistently since.

There are currently 3 valid passport designs out there, and the current intermediate design (the one with a London tube map in it) can be slightly misaligned with the edge. If you place the passport with a small parallel gap - just a couple of millimetres - on the machine readable coding side it may work better.

Common surname perhaps?
I have raised a formal complaint to UK Border Agency about this recently. Reading between the standard waffle response you can kind of work out this the reason why so many people have to seek assistance.

Same here seems there are quite a few Smith's on the wanted list :mad:

My local MP was also interested in the outcome and asked me to keep him informed. (Nobody particularly notable so there is hope I guess!)

At first I thought it was just me being a numpty at the T5 e-gates but it turned out it was understaffing behind the glass. It has worked great for me over the last year and always works in places like Finland and Germany

This has happened to my new passport (from January) at every gate I've tried it at in the UK, except Luton.

It's failed at Heathrow T5, T4 and T2, Stansted, Gatwick and Paris Gare du Nord. And it failed on the gates in Amsterdam too.

It worked fine at Copenhagen and Luton. The gates at Luton still showed the camera picture of me, whereas the others never do. Did Luton just not get a software update?

I've asked the border agents and they just tell me I'm doing it wrong. My previous passport never had an issue. I thought maybe it couldn't match me to the photo, but I must be closer to the January 2017 photo to the 2010 one (which has had border staff asking if I had other ID even).

I have a 100% pass rate at T5 with my passport - Mrs PJH981's passport, on the other hand, fails at T5 100% of the time - but unexplicably seems to generally work fine at LGW and other EU destinations.

Never had any issues at T5, LGW or MAN in the UK, nor at MAD or on the Eurostar e-border gates (both on the UK and French sides).

I don't even take my glasses off and it still works.