I just renewed my passport, and it's now a shiny e-passport, but I'm not sure what that means in terms of international travel. Do all (major) airports tend to have e-passport gates for which my e-passport will work? Do I no longer have to queue to be looked up and down by an expressionless security officer? Is e-passport generally faster than the manual check? Can I do the manual check if the queue is shorter?

My next 3 trips are LHR, PHX and BCN.

What country is your passport from?

Rep.Ireland

It will mean nothing in PHX

Sorry, what does that mean? I can't use anything except the manual security check?

It means that your epassport won't gain you any advantage (at all) in places that don't recognize epassports.

Ok good to know there's no point in looking around PHX for some sort of e-passport gates.

Isn't pretty much every modern passport an epassport these days?

No advantage outside EU. In the EU you can use e-passport gates.

UK citizens can use the e-passport gates in Australia (and New Zealand I think) so I'd assume IE citizens can too.

Tks folks. I thought it might be more useful than it is, but at least my most-visited-airport (LHR) should work, until Thursday anyway

It's a bit of an assumption, but in this case you're right...here's the list

You can use e-gates within the EU/EEA but generally not in other countries unless you enrolled for them first and, depending on the country, you'd typically have to be a resident or at least a frequent visitor to apply.

At a staffed desk, an e-passport will not speed up things because the RFID tag can only be read after certain data has been scanned with OCR or manually entered. If anything, this has the potential to make the formalities longer, although in practice it doesn't.

Some countries only extend their visa waiver policies to e-passport holders, so it's good that you have one though.

As the RFID security appears to have already been compromised, you might want to consider using a RFID-blocking passport holder if this is of concern to you.

The Automated Passport Kiosks at select airports only work for US Passport Holders and those who visited the US once since I believe since 2008. I have used the E Passport machines at SFO,SEA and YVR LAX has them too. They do save time as opposed to filling out the form on the plane you put your Passport under the Barcode Reader and follow the onscreen prompts. First it will ask you to answer the declaration passports, then you will take a picture and then have the option to add additional travelers who are listed under the declaration form.

After this you will take the ticket to the next available agent who will then swipe your passport and you will keep this form until you get your luggage and turn it in just before clearing customs as you will be directed to the Nothing To Declare or Declare Lane.

For International Passengers you will keep the ticket which is your Visa and return it upon checkin for your return flight.

For Australia & New Zealand you do not need to enroll first, what ever that means. Just put the passport in the kiosk.
You can still use the passport at manual gates if you want to. E-gates tend to be faster than manual, but just look at the queue.