New Finnish passport not working at UK e-passport gates
 

This is not strictly the right forum for this but thought that this would be a reasonable way to reach Finnish passport holders. Hopefully it will be allowed...

I have a recently renewed Finnish passport that just can't be read by any of the e-passport gates at UK airports such as LHR. First I thought I'm just unlucky, but today when queuing to the manual passport check desk I noticed another Finnish passport holder in front of me: they were complaining about the exact same issue. It got me thinking that there could be some broader incompatibility problem here.

Does anyone here have this issue? Any ideas who to contact, UK border force or the Finnish authorities who issue the passport?

The moral of the story: You can start your trip, but you can't Finnish.

;)

Hope you got it sorted out manually.

Chatted with one of the border agents a few weeks ago, she told me they need a SW update for the gates, they've had problems with some Finnish passports, including mine. Last two times (2 weeks ago, last Wednesday) I got through ok, so thought they've already sorted this out.

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.

Occasional hiccups. Since the gates finally opened, only once I have been caught red handed.

The E-Gates probably need to be updated to support the newest keys that the Finnish are using on their new passport. They have an issue with some newish US passports (For those registered to use the UK e-gates) as well.

Oh well, it's only for another year and a half... they're probably not going to bother fixing their machines.

Huh?? Why would you queue with Indians at LHR unless they were EU citizens in which case it will take just as long as anyone else.

At LHR you can ignore anybody dressed in purple and go to any counter you please.

As far as I can see, T3 has two options: go to the line for EU nationals, which will have you end up in front of a machine; or go to the line for non-EU-non-this-non-that, ie the general line and end up in the slow line (where eg Indian passport holders are). There doesn't seem to be a dedicated EU+human option.

There is, not sure if there's always an entry on the main queue level, but there's usually one to the counter in the middle of the e-gate queue. But for EU there's often only one desk open so it's much faster to try the e-gate and then go behind if that doesn't work.

There is for e.g. families. But with maybe only one officer they don't want you to queue there when they believe that your passport is working.

Do these e-gates work actually with id cards? At least the last time they sent me to the manual queue with it.

In EDI they have three queues: one for EU passports (automated gate), one for EU nationals with ID cards (manual) and one for non-EU.

AFAIK not. And not only at LHR but anywhere else.

Depends on your ID card. The new HUN ID cards contain biometric identification, supporting the e-gate immigration!

Yes, but do LHR gates support the HU ID cards? :)