Just interested if anyone else has my e-gate UK passport problem.

My passport is about a year old. My previous passport had a laminated card page with the photo and details. This worked in all passport machines without damage - most designs seem to require that you lay the page flat, and slide it forward into position. Simple, with a card or laminate page with just a little strength to it.

The new one I received last year, has a paper photo and detail page, instead of a card one. Oddly, the page is *mostly* laminated and stiff over the details. But that critical section that connects it to the binding of the passport is not laminated, and is just very thin paper for those most important few millimetres that connect to the binding. The area in fact, where all the pressure is when sliding this thin paper document onto a reader and trying to keep it flat.

After only a year of use week in, week out, this section is permanently creased and is now not possible to flatten. The passport no longer works in e-gates either in the UK or elsewhere. The passport office, when I enquired, have said this is not a fault and the passport shouldn’t be replaced just because it no longer works on e-gates, claiming that it will just be ‘bad luck’ on each occasion if I am sent to the manual queue.

Border staff both in the UK and one other country have said, in an informal and off the record way, that they think the paper design is to blame and it happens all the time, and also that it wouldn’t be usual to find every read referred to a border official for a period of months. But that this is not the official answer and the official answer is that the gates ‘may not work for every traveller, every time’.

Not very keen on the remaining nine years waiting in the manual processing queue. Passport office seemed pretty clear that I “should not” apply for a new passport but less clear as to whether I “could not”.

Does anyone else have this problem, with the little paper join section being easily damaged over time? And does anyone happen to know if the design may ever change back to a more robust material?





(Image shows crease. Laminate area begins below UNITED KINGDOM text, sewn seam into booklet is above. Problem crease visible in middle of UNITED KINGDOM text. The UNITED KINGDOM text itself is on very thin paper and is pushed back toward the seam when sliding the passport into readers of the type which require the passport data page be slid in, face down.)

Happened to me today at T5. Two separate e gates decided not to read my UK passport. Worked last time I used it 13 months ago, as I only travel for leisure. I did mention this in the other e gate thread earlier today, as I thought i had damaged my passport. So this is a potential design flaw? Mine lasts until 2026, so looks like I have a fair few years of going to a manned desk then.

Bri

I tend to get this problem with e-gates at Spanish airports where the reader is quite poorly designed and the page ends up snagging on something.

So there is a presumption that Fast Track will eventually be killed off at LHR at least, and it’s a matter of when and not if? That would probably make the cost-cutting-addicted airline executives happy, as Fast Track costs the airlines money.

The airlines wanting to save money at the expense of consumers will be happy to have more and more excuses to cut yet another cost and to do so at the expense of passengers. I don’t welcome that. Rather I want to see the Fast Track choice remain as easily accessible to me as it has been during prior weeks, months and years and to remain a choice for me for as long as I keep flying to LHR. It’s normal for a consumer to want more choices to choose from, including in order to save time.

I have said my piece on this for now.