Long queues for boarding and security checks could also be alleviated, as the survey found that by 2014 just over one-third of airports will have introduced electronic gates for self-boarding and 42 per cent will have e-gates that carry out security checks, such as confirming that a passenger matches their passport.
It takes a matter of seconds for a human to check passport identity and boarding pass. It seems to take an age for the new UKBA machines to perform their facial recognition task, and (in my experience) for the LGW retinal scan machines to do their thing. The tech is going to have to get a lot smarter and quicker to beat the human speed, and even if they do, there is still the problem of SLF self loading.
At least in Asia the airports invest in multiple airbridges on each stand for wide bodied aircraft, unlike, say, BAA's spanking new state of the art T5.