Passengers are being warned that they could face delays this summer, following the introduction of new passport laser scanning technology by the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA).
Aimed at preventing criminals and illegal immigrants entering the country, the new system requires security staff to use equipment that can read e-Passports’ security holograms and other digital data designed to prevent forgeries.
However, John Tincey of the Immigration Service Union warned that the process could slow down holidaymakers’ passage through airports. “It used to take between three to four seconds to process a passenger,” he said. “Now you are looking at eight to ten seconds, so it has more than doubled. At busy times this makes the situation impossible.”
He said there had been long queues reported at Stansted Airport, which was struggling to cope with a growing number of passengers even before the new measures were introduced.
Gatwick, Luton and Birmingham are set to get the equipment soon and could face similar passenger bottlenecks.
A spokesman for the BIA said that there was a record number of border control staff at work to alleviate the problem.
The new biometric ePassport, launched last year, is harder to forge, with features showing whether or not it has been tampered with. More than four million have so far been issued to UK citizens.
