Cardiff Airport opened its new passport e-gates yesterday. The e-gates are part of the airports no-deal Brexit plan and will allow passengers with biometric (chipped) passports to pass through border control without having to endure manual inspection.
With queues of a five hour wait time expected post-Brexit, these gates will be essential in easing the passport control and immigration queues. The gates have the ability to verify your identity by using facial recognition to compare your face to the photograph in your passport.
The gates will also help towards the growth of Cardiff Airport, which sees around 428,000 passengers landing in Wales every year. London’s Gatwick offers the e-gate system, as does Heathrow.
The news comes just after the Government announced that 3.5 million passports will be invalid if we leave the EU on the 29th March 2019 without a deal. Passengers will need to have 6-months validity remaining on their passport from the date they leave the UK.
If passengers are refused entry to a country due to invalid documents, the loss of expenses will not be covered by travel insurance.