How UK is using technology to reduce immigration queues at airports across the country

The UK has begun trials of a “contactless” border system that uses facial recognition to process arriving passengers. This system eliminates the need for British citizens to show their passports at immigration queues at airports across the country.

The technology aims to "considerably reduce" immigration processing times nationwide. The initial trial, which took place at Manchester Airport last month, replaces traditional passport checks, which require a passport to be scanned, with technology that identifies the passenger using facial features and matches them against existing government databases. According to Phil Douglas, the director-general of Border Force, the trial demonstrated that processing times are faster because the physical passport scan has been removed.

The trial ran for three weeks in October and was open to British passport-holders. The new technology has also been integrated into the UK's existing e-gates.

What UK official said about the facial recognition system at airports

In a statement to The Times, Douglas said: “The border has really changed over the last few years and that work is picking up pace. Public expectations have changed and technology has changed. We now have AI facial recognition, the use of biometric identifiers in parallel with the more traditional forms of identification, like visas and passports.”

Plans for the contactless border were first reported last year. At that point, Douglas said the goal was to create an “intelligent border” that used “much more frictionless facial recognition than we currently do.”The trials at Manchester Airport used the existing e-gates, which generally require passengers to insert their passports into a reader before the system captures their image. If everything matches, the gate opens automatically.

Passengers who are not recognised or need further checks are directed to a Border Force officer.Douglas said that even as technology moves forward, there remains “something important about the ‘theatre’ of the border.” He explained that when people cross the border, “they’re stopped [and] it’s a moment they know they’re being checked,” and that new systems should not remove this sense of scrutiny.There are more than 270 e-gates in operation across airports and ports, and Douglas said the UK plans to increase their use.“We’ve got a new contract for gates and we’re going to be expanding them even further. It’s our intention that almost everybody will go through an e-gate of one description or another. The Manchester pilot has shown that we can actually reduce transaction times considerably as well,” Douglas added.He added that passenger waiting times this year had competed “pretty well with almost any other country,” though some airports expressed concerns about travellers reaching baggage reclaim too quickly.“It has been said to me by some airports, ‘don’t get too fast, because then you’ll give us a problem at baggage collection,’” Douglas noted.E-gates in the UK were initially limited to British and European Union passport holders. Still, their use has gradually expanded to arrivals from Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Switzerland and the US.The trials of “contactless gates” aim to bring the UK’s border procedures closer to a gold standard already used in other regions. To compare, Dubai uses facial recognition for 50 nationalities, while the US and Australia are also investing heavily in similar technology.Douglas said the UK’s direction was in “stark contrast” to new EU measures, including the Entry/Exit system, which will require British travellers to have their fingerprints and photo taken both on arrival and departure.