Now face-reading smart gates at Dubai International airport

Dubai - Passengers no longer need to stand in long queues at the immigration counters to get their passports stamped.

Now, you can clear immigration at the Dubai International airport in just five seconds thanks to a new face-recognition facility.

Passengers no longer need to stand in long queues at the immigration counters to get passports stamped, according to general directorate of residency and foreign affairs (GDRFA) officials.

The officials said the new-generation smart gates installed at the Terminal 3 of Dubai International Airports reduced passport control of passengers to an average of five seconds.

Your smartphone is now your passport at Dubai airport

Travellers with registered Emirates ID cards, registered passports or E-gate and Skywards cards can use the new smart gates to avoid long queues and walk straight to their flights without personal encounter with passport control officers.

As many as 25 new generation smart gates were installed at the departure hall of Terminal 3 managed to cut the time to scan traveller's identity details to an average of 3-5 seconds.

Travelling from home to Dubai airport set to be a breeze

Brigadier Talal Ahmad Al Shanqeti, general director assistant of airport passport sector at the GDRFA, said the gates now open through face recognition when passports are scanned without having to take fingerprints of travellers or examine their passports.

"When passengers arrive at or leave the country, passport control officials stamp the passports while taking their biometric and face-recognition data. So next time these residents use the airport, their passports are already registered, and the new smart gates will open through face recognition," said Al Shanqeti.

He noted that over 150,000 travellers used the new smart gates ever since they were installed last month. "The new gates are faster and more accurate, which contributed to reducing queues of passengers and speeding up the passport control process," said Al Shanqeti.

More smart gates by next year

The GDRFA is currently replacing the remaining 97 smart gates at Terminals 1, 2 and Al Maktoum Airport with new-generation gates, with 40 more scheduled to be added by the first quarter of 2018.

While 15 of the new smart gates at Terminal 3 are for economy class travellers, the remaining 10 are for business and first-class passengers.

The target is to allow 40 per cent of travellers use the smart gates to pass through quickly and easily. Since the beginning of 2017, over four million travellers have used smart gates across the four airports of Dubai.

Major General Mohammad Al Marri, director general of the GDRFA, said airport staff is deployed at the smart gates to guide passengers through the procedure of using the smart gates.

"This technology is new to people, so it will take them some time to get used to it. Once they used it successfully once, it becomes easier the next time they approach it."

He said the common mistakes witnessed at the smart gates is placing the wrong finger at the censors to examine fingerprints, not having documents ready when approaching the gate or bringing along big baggage. "We see such mistakes daily, but awareness and repetition will make the process smoother," said Al Marri.

He urged travellers to read instructions placed before the gate and have their documents ready to avoid delays at the smart gates.

On the spot passport renewal for Emiratis

"If an Emirati is travelling and he suddenly discovers that his passport expires in less than six months, which most countries don't allow, he/she can approach the center and get the passport renewed on the spot," Major General Mohammad Al Marri, director general of general directorate of residency and foreign affairs (GDRFA), said during a media tour at the Dubai Airports Customer Service Centre located at Terminal 3.

Al Marri said the last-minute visa requests are processed at the centre open 24 hours a day. He added that the centre aims to increase efficiency and simplify visa and residency-related transactions without the need of visiting GDRFA headquarters or external branches.

The centre also responds to travellers with urgent need to renew or cancel visa before travelling. "The only thing done manually is printing the visa on passports, the rest is all done online," Al Marri added.

Since the UAE vision system was introduced, the quick visa transactions reduced customers visiting the GDRFA offices to about 90 per cent in 2017.

The UAE vision system renewed over 11,244 passports and issued 4.9 million visas from January to September 2017.

The centre processes transactions delivered from Amer and Tasheel centres, routing them electronically to the GDRFA.

KT NANO EDIT

Simply fly

Technology has made lines smaller at Dubai airport, one of the busiest in the world and, indeed, the busiest in the region. In fact, It's making headlines. It's easier catching a flight than boarding a bus or hailing a cab. You simply walk through and new generation smart gates do the rest. Thanks to the unique Emirates ID process, the system works for everything from banking to immigration. It takes the fear out of flying.

sherouk@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai