£50 to fast track immigration queues at British airports
Helen YoungIn order to avoid long queues at immigration, travellers will benefit from the option of paying up to £50 under a new fast-track programme at British international airports designed to reduce delays.
A trial run of the new system will be introduced next year at Terminal 4 of Heathrow Airport permitting passengers without biometric passports to use automated quick gates.
The idea is the latest in a series of extra charges that have contributed to the rise air travel cost.
Liverpool and Luton airports already give customers a chance to jump security line-ups when paying a fee when leaving Britain.
Another money generating program is the scheme spearheaded by British Airways. The carrier will introduce fees this week for passengers who want to select a seat on both short haul and long haul flights.
The new automated rapid gates will be capable of reading new biometric passports, which are fitted with chips containing information about the owner’s facial features such as the distance between the eyes, nose, mouth and ears.
Nearly 20 million Britons currently possess the new biometric passports, which were first introduced in March 2006. For the ones having the new passport, the scheme will be free of charge, along with EU travellers who have biometric documents.
The largest airport operator in Britain, BAA, is in the process of working out an agreement with the UK Border Agency over a scheme titled ‘automated clearance system plus’ (ACS+), which would able the present day 28million Britons who hold non-biometric passports to also use the rapid gates.
Under the ACS+ plan, users would pay a fee to ‘enrol’ at Heathrow, having data concerning their facial features being stored on a data base and twined to their passport number.
The fees charged to Heathrow passengers would contribute to the £7million cost of the new automated gates.
An alternative to paying the fee and still having access to a fast gate would be for travellers to renew their passports, at the present costs from £77.50 to £129.50 depending on the speed of service required.
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Filed under Business & Finance, Travel News, UK News