Originally Posted by
PAXboy
Agreed DRUK. Mine worked at T2 in March for the first time in two years! On each occaision that I went to the back up desk - they always said that they could read the chip and there was no problem. It failed to work at LTN, LGW (N+S), LHR (T2+3).
When mine failed to work at LGW for the first time in 2-3 years of weekly round trips the nice man confirmed there was nothing wrong with the chip. He found a few small blobs of grunge obscuring part of the text at the bottom of the ID page. The LGW e-gate scanners read the text as well, presumably to check that it matches the information on the chip. After cleaning the ID page the passport has worked every time since.
I keep the passport in a plastic wallet when it's not being inspected so I suspect it might have picked up the grunge inside one of the AMS e-gates before I got on the flight.
There are also some people who just don't seem to be able to work the gates, in terms of standing in the right place, keeping their head still, looking at the screen as instructed, and assisting the face recognition software by removing hats, glasses etc.