stifle

IRIS cost a seven-figure sum and is still head and shoulders above all the other ways of crossing the border.

rwoman

Was there a valid reason to ditch it and "replace" it with e-passport gates? I know an agent in T3 a few months ago said they plan to do a pay-for-epassport programme for non-EU citizens...who knows how long it could take for it to appear though... Outside of T4, IRIS usually functioned well and was certainly easy to register for..I'd have been happy to pay a fee just as I did with Global Entry in the US.

stifle

I'm not aware of any reason I consider valid for it to be happening. The media continue to make unsourced throwaway remarks about it being "expensive", "unreliable", and "slow", which only apply, if at all, to unregistered kettles.

rwoman

And I cannot help but wonder how costly it was to install all of those e-passport gates that may (or may not) work...

rwoman

And it gets better...of course, those I know who came through LHR during the last strike did so with great ease...

Heathrow immigration staff to strike next week

jib71

I'm sure you're not the only one. Many non-EU citizens who reside in the UK or enter frequently would welcome the option to pay a fee and give up some personal data in exchange for access to a quick, automated gate. In addition to improving the experience for those that pay, it would reduce pressure on the queues for human agents, and generate revenues. Win, win, win.

rwoman

Not just in the UK anymore...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/europ...l#post18504531

NickB

I believe that the issue with Iris was its inability to handle large number of passengers well. Some of us who used Iris from the start may remember a period when Iris was extremely slow at recognition and, from what I recall of discussions at the time, this was due to the slowness of searching for the iris match in a large database. Matters improved dramatically when large number of people how had registered but were not using the system were culled from the database.

If you look at it from a UKBA and BAA perspective, this has to be regarded as a major flaw of Iris in that it mobilises resources for a small number of passengers. e-gates are more attractive in being in principle able to handle larger number of passengers.


I struggle to suppress a wry smile in the current debacle as to how it would seem to vindicate Brodie Clark's risk analysis and intelligence-based approach to border control versus the 'let's control everybody regardless of any risk analysis and at whatever consequences for airport usability' Theresa May approach or, if you prefer, the professional versus (tabloid-fearing) politician approach.

Christopher

Yes indeed. Surely (in practical terms) all immigration controls involve an assessment of risk on the part of the immigration officer.

For example, many countries require visitors to have an onward/return ticket, sufficient funds, be not going to work while in the country, etc, etc. Some/all of those visitors might be asked, for example, how long they are going to stay. A few (but not many) of that subset might be asked to produce their ticket/itinerary showing their flight or other transport out of the country. Usually that would be enough. But even the existence of such a ticket or itinerary doesn't actually prove that a person won't over-stay, since people can do a no-show and write off the expense or, in some cases, simply get a refund for an unused ticket. But very, very few of the arriving visitors who have been asked to show their ticket/itinerary are quizzed further in any detail about it – but some are (presumably those considered, in the opinion of the immigration officer to be a risk). And so on.

Putting it another way, it's hard to see that, say, a newly retired couple from Canada who are coming to the UK for a three-week organised bus tour round Great Britain pose the same threat, and need the same level of scrutiny, as a 21-year-old male who has made numerous visits to Afghanistan in the past two years that he can't explain properly. And so on.

I do think all passports need to be checked on arrival in the UK from outside the Common Travel Area, but a risk-based approach is surely sensible and – as I say – almost universally applied anyway in most countries.

[Of course, when it comes to customs, these days most countries (certainly those in the EU) adopt an almost purely risk-based approach. A few arriving passengers are singled out at random and questioned/searched, but most simply waltz through the green channel without even a backward glance. Customs gets most of its "hauls" through intelligence and so on. Even in countries like the US, where everyone has to fill in a customs form, most passengers are subjected to desultory questioning about customs (as opposed to immigration) at most.]

ajax

Unfortunately, the tabloid press is not sensible.

Christopher

True enough. But good governance sometimes involves going against the received wisdom the tabloid press, no?!

ajax

Not when it involves Johnny Foreigner.

rwoman

Telegraph: Existing hit squads doing little to tackle immigration delays

Glad to see they're being effective...

Aviatrix

My husband and mother-in-law landed at Gatwick a little while ago. My husband reports that while the non-EU queue seemed nothing out of the ordinary, the EU queue "had to be seen to be believed" - so it looks like they must have moved staff away from processing EU passengers this morning.

Normally my husband would have been in that queue, but he was allowed to use the disabled route with his mother on this occasion. (Apparently the normal rule is that only the wheelchair passenger gets special treatment and their companions have to queue with everybody else, but they realised this wasn't feasible on this occasion).

My husband thinks it would have taken about an hour to get through.

rwoman

Could part of this be due to people returning from the holiday weekend? I've come into LHR before on bank holidays to see the EU queue much crazier than the non-EU one.