News: eGate trial for 10-11 year olds, last day to save on passport fees, Corinthia London deal

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• riku says:

  1 Feb1 February 05:33

  >>One issue is how well the technology can successfully do a facial match
  It’s been revealed in previous comments on this site (and by standing behind the border force official in the booth near the egates) that in the UK the “facial match” is supervised by a person who sees the camera picture and passport picture side by side and decides if they match. It’s not automatic for anybody in the UK. This is the reason that a large number of eGates are normally closed – the number of open gates is related to how many staff are doing the picture matching.

  • Can says:

    1 Feb1 February 06:22

    Seriously? What’s next, Border Force will delagate it to Fiverr!?!

  • Alan says:

    1 Feb1 February 07:01

    Indeed, yet despite this they somehow still recurrently don’t work and you have to queue for the manual desks. I find UK Border is the slowest, in comparison through Aussie eGates or US Global Entry in <2 min!

    • VALittleRed says:

      1 Feb1 February 07:06

      Yes it’s surprising how few people realise eGates are all manual. Is there automation in other countries eGates?

      • Rhys says:

        1 Feb1 February 08:23

        They’re not fully manual I don’t believe. I think the way it works is that they’re semi-automatic, but they have someone supervising several gates at once.

        • Rui N. says:

          1 Feb1 February 08:42

          Indeed, that’s how it works everywhere. The automated system does its checks, and flags for manual review if it can’t let the person in by itself.

      • blenz101 says:

        1 Feb1 February 09:53

        Certainly in the UAE the e-Gate are automated for residents / registered users. During Covid entry and exit was touchless. Walk into the gate, look at the camera, full name and registered photo appears on on the screen, green tick, walk thorough.

        Yes there is someone supervising but software recognition is doing almost all of the heavy lifting.

    • Swifty says:

      1 Feb1 February 14:50

      Guess you haven’t been through cgd and Barcelona recently lol

  • TGLoyalty says:

    1 Feb1 February 17:27

    Utter nonsense

    No one is checking every person at every egate. I can believe Some are flagged and checked

  • ty says:

    3 Feb3 February 15:40

    A large number of the egates are actually closed because of a deal with the unions, it is nothing more than job preservation. Those traveling during the last strike should have noticed that all gates were suddenly open.

• Jenny says:

  1 Feb1 February 06:17

  For the Corinthia, don’t forget to also stack with Virtuoso benefits (upgrade on arrival, subject to availability; daily full breakfast for 2; £85 credit to use in Northall Restaurant, Bassoon Bar, Kerridge’s Bar & Grill, Crystal Moon Lounge, Velvet, In room Dining and ESPA Life at Corinthia; flexible check-in/check-out)

• kwho says:

  1 Feb1 February 06:22

  Our 9 year old used the e-gates in Singapore Changi without any problems. Technology there worked.

  • Paul says:

    1 Feb1 February 07:22

    Because the technology is allowed to do its job and not be delegated to the someone sitting at as screen
    Border control is such a toxic issue in the U.K. ,because there is still none, that those who don’t travel far and wide really don’t understand just how awful an experience it is compared to entry to other places. I was stunned in December at the ease of entering Australia. The USA has improved immeasurably and the pleasantness with which countries like Singapore welcome you, while strictly controlling entry and exit; is in stark contrast to the experience at Heathrow!

    As for
    “ Personally, I am looking forward to late April this year when my youngest finally hits 12 years old and we can say goodbye to the manned desks ….” don’t hold your breath. The failure rate means you will almost certainly be visiting desks for a while yet!

    • Harry T says:

      1 Feb1 February 10:59

      The US is frequently terrible, unless you have Global Entry, due to the pointless and belligerent interrogations of people with a low pretest probability of causing trouble.

      Sydney is very good at the moment.

  • Rich says:

    1 Feb1 February 09:18

    The issue is not the technology but managing the risk of child trafficking. Different countries set different parameters for the age at which a child and the accompanying adult need to present to a border official rather than a machine.

• MT says:

  1 Feb1 February 07:23

  Stayed at the Corinthia last time Amex did an offer and combined it with a 3 for 2. While the spa is amazing I must say of the “Luxury Hotels” of London it was pretty terrible on every other level, so personally won’t be going back.

  I believe the 3for2 offer is also available via FHR and this getting Breakfast and $100 credit for the stay.

• Jonathan says:

  1 Feb1 February 07:30

  Can you still use your existing passport once the renewal application has been submitted? I need to renew mine ASAP but need to use it over Feb half term first.

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    1 Feb1 February 08:04

    Yes but they simply won’t issue the new passport until they have received the old one for cancellation and clipping.

    At the moment people are reporting it’s about a week from end to end for a renewal.

    • Alan says:

      1 Feb1 February 08:57

      Damn that’s quick! Think I got conned paying for the one week service in November, but lots of reports at the time of people waiting many weeks and no way to easily chase.

      • StanTheMan says:

        1 Feb1 February 13:14

        Kid’s renewal took 10 days in January. I do believe that the outlier slow processing times may be people who fill in forms badly, incorrectly taken photos, dont get correctly authorised photos etc.
        It does take a bit of time and patience. And I can imagine unless it is a simple renewal, accurately submitted, it can get bogged down for some time.

    • Kelvin says:

      1 Feb1 February 16:47

      Renewed online 6th Jan, posted old passport 9th Jan, new passport received 16th Jan. Old passport was valid for some countries, but fell foul of start date >10 years previously rule, thereby precluding entry into Schengen zone countries.

  • SammyJ says:

    1 Feb1 February 10:01

    Applied late on 5th Jan, and posted it next morning. Received the new one on Mon 16th. All done fully online.

  • Chris Baker says:

    1 Feb1 February 10:41

    Got our pics at Max Spielmann last Thursday, applied on line on Thursday evening, sent passports on Friday. New passport arrived today. So six days in total.

• Concerto says:

  1 Feb1 February 07:45

  The passport office asked for feedback and they got it. I told them a British passport is not worth the ludicrous amount I paid for it (well over a hundred pounds by post from Switzerland). The Swiss were literally laughing at me because they pay much less for a passport.

  • No Longer Entitled says:

    1 Feb1 February 08:22

    If it matters to you that much then you can rejoice in laughing at them every time you witness them buy a latte. Or anything else.

  • Harry T says:

    1 Feb1 February 11:00

    Sounds like a good reason to move to Switzerland, then!

    • TGLoyalty says:

      1 Feb1 February 17:29

      Not when you see the price of everything else there!

  • Jonathan says:

    1 Feb1 February 12:22

    Unfortunately that’s part and parcel of getting your home country’s passport when you live in a foreign country.

    The passport has to go through the same factory that all other passports issued by that country go through, and it then has to be carried by an embassy official from the UK to whichever country it needs to go to, none of that is going to be cheap…
    Of course an embassy official isn’t going to be travelling to the UK and back to wherever they’re based just to be transporting passports, they’ll be doing other things as well

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      1 Feb1 February 13:13

      All UK passports (other than emergency travel documents) are produced by the UK based HMPO offices and then sent to the recipient by courier.

      There isn’t a “factory” doing this and UK diplomatic staff aren’t ferrying them to and from to the UK either.

      The only factory involved in producing UK passports is the one in Poland that only produces the blank books which are then personalised by HMPO.

    • RussellH says:

      1 Feb1 February 15:43

      Swiss passports are delivered in the UK through the normal post, by the regular postman, not by a courier as here. I cannot remember whether the postage paid was Swiss or UK.
      However, the price difference for one delivered in Switzerland is, as I said, CHF145. It is only another CHF4 to send it here. Not that much extra in the scheme of things. And CHF145 is way above £75.50 or even £82.50. You could say that a UK passport is a bargain.
      I guess the foreign country surcharge here is much greater than that for Switzerland, but I suspect that the percentage of Swiss passports sent to other countries is probably significantly greater than for the UK, even though there will obviously be far more UK in total.

• TimM says:

  1 Feb1 February 07:49

  At Manchester they have one member of staff for around a dozen eGates, manually looking at photos and deciding whether to press the ‘match’ or reject buttons. Yet at security, AI decides if there is anything requiring further investigation in your hand luggage – around half of all bags!

  iPhones have had very accurate Face ID for many years. Why can’t similar tech be employed at the eGates and a human be employed to look at baggage scanner screens?

  • jjoohhnn says:

    1 Feb1 February 11:04

    Face ID makes updates to its stored images if your appearance changes in some way, this is why it sometimes fails and asks for passcode. Consider one day you have a long beard, and then next you cut it short. It will update for this. There is no way eGates can do this as you don’t constantly interact with them in the same way so you will get higher failure rates.

    • jjoohhnn says:

      1 Feb1 February 11:05

      *Stored data it has gathered from your images, I suppose rather than storing images.

    • Rhys says:

      1 Feb1 February 12:38

      …however, it would be slightly absurd if they didn’t store images from previous eGate imagery for additional verification. I took 66 flights last year and it still only lets me through around 50% of the time!

• Dirtyneedlebluesky says:

  1 Feb1 February 08:15

  Personally hate the egates and would much prefer to use a manned desk. Not sure how the law stands now but used to have discussions at MAN/Heathrow on not using egates as it wasn’t enforable (at least at the time) but seems to be little wiggle from for this now plus they have improved a little since the early days of adoption (one of my problems was a big picture of my bleary face staring back at me at a long haul flight – even i wouldn’t match that to my passport together with data privacy concerns on what they then do with images they capture!!). Manned desks also seem to have shorter lines as well.

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