Any UK Border Force or Passport staffing here

[Kiltrash]

Just asking as yet again my UK e passport would not let me through London Luton and I had to go via the " Seek Assistance " route. This only happens in Luton, no other UK or overseas airports with e gate...
Yesterday I noticed I was not alone in this problem and there were about 12 of us inline for the Border Force officer whereas my wife just sailed through....
I would think it's a issue with my picture not reasonable matching my face...but why only at Luton???
Does anyone think I should get a new passport with picture? Or just try and avoid Luton??

[davidjohnson6]

Perhaps you could ask somebody from Border Force on site at Luton why the machine refused you ? Could there be a fault with the specific machine you used ?
If, as you say, your passport photo does not look similiar to you, then rejection is to be expected.

[25F]

I had assumed that it is automatic but according to wikipedia: "an officer at a control station behind the gates checks that the image captured by the camera matches the one on the passport". So a radical new haircut might make a human doubt it's you.

Why Luton? Why not? IME with security on the way out there's precious little consistency between airports.

[V_2]

Some machines scan the text&image of the passport page, some scan the chip inside, some do both. The chips inside the passport regularly fail, which may be what LTN use.

[PAXboy]

A relative of mine who works in Border Force says that the chip can be corrupted over time and thus cause the rejection. But the officer on duty will NEVER tell you why the system or officer supervising the system, rejected you. If they did, you might be able to 'game' the system.

I only get through about 30% of the time and it varies by airport. On a recent trip to VCE, at VCE their computer handled my e-passport without a pause. Returning to LHR = rejected. Consequently, I have decided never to bother with the computer again and just go to the human queue.

[Kiltrash]

I did not want to question why I was rejected in case it was seen as abuse of the staff and I spent the night in the cells with a gloved finger up my ar$e

[redsnail]

I have 2 UK passports. One I was using all the time would be rejected at LHR. I was chatting to the Border Force officers and they suggested that the photo was old and that was possibly causing some issues. They checked my other passport and suggested that I use that one as the primary. So far since doing that, I have had no issues with any of the e-gates in Europe or LHR. I was in the work uniform and the arrivals hall was not busy so they were happy to chat.

[davidjohnson6]

I did not want to question why I was rejected in case it was seen as abuse of the staff and I spent the night in the cells with a gloved finger up my ar$e
Some people might enjoy the experience :-)
I'll get my coat...

[Expatrick]

I did not want to question why I was rejected in case it was seen as abuse of the staff and I spent the night in the cells with a gloved finger up my ar$e

Good call!

[Asturias56]

Goodness - we might have an outbreak of that strange fault that occurred at LHR and MAN IIRC when e gates first came in - mysterious forces seemed to move broken matchsticks into the readers...................

[mikegss]

If that's the case why does the machine insist on you taking your glasses off?

At UK airports, most of the time the machine "asks" me to remove my glasses... but sometimes it doesn't. I've never been able to figure out why. I assume there might be some degree of "randomality" (if that's a word) built in, just to provide a slight extra level of unpredictability that someone with nefarious motives might not be able to rely on 100% of the time.

[edi_local]

I get rejected at the e-gates every time I use the old Immigration hall at EDI, but not the new one, where it works pretty much all the time. I put it down to more modern machines.

GLA, MAN, and LHR T5 are all okay with my passport too, but LTN and LHR T3 reject it every time.

[S.o.S.]

Hello mikegss and welcome to the Cabin of PPRuNe. Generally, it seems to be glasses off and I think that is about avoiding reflections, or, if someone has tinted lenses.

The machines at LHR T5 rarely work for me. Elsewhere it seems to be random.

[Andrewgr2]

UK e-gates always reject my passport regardless of airport. It works fine at those overseas airports that will accept UK biometric passports. As mentioned in earlier posts Border Force agents won’t tell you what the problem is but I have, I think, managed to solicit the information that someone with a similar name is on a list. And separately, that I shouldn’t even bother trying to use an e- gate and that there is nothing wrong with my passport. It’s frustrating not knowing how long this problem will go on, and s ems extraordinary that having been checked by an officer once my record can’t be marked as OK.

[Asturias56]

This came up a few years ago on Pprune - someone was being pulled over because his name was Gun or Rifle or similar.

I know someone - a US citizen resident in the UK - who had similar issues. H eventually discovered he shared his name with a senior member of a well known Italian -American fraternal society out of Boston, Chicago & Las Vegas :}

[ShyTorque]

I was made to wait for “referral” on trying to enter New Zealand with my nine year old son. The immigration officer became quite flustered and aggressive when I asked him to clarify what he meant. My wife and our two other sons were let through the adjacent checkpoint at the same time and were not allowed to wait near us. We had been asked to go through adjacent checkpoints to save time. Much to my wife’s concern they were then ushered away through the doors beyond.

In those days, children did not hold their own passport documents, their names had to be added to that of their parents. We were perfectly legal in that respect, both my wife and I had all three offspring on both of our passports and had travelled fairly widely as a family.

Eventually, we were led away by “heavies”, to a side office. My passport was scrutinised again by men in suits and after some delay and phone calls being made I was asked to confirm which one of us was which. Judging from the dates of birth and my photo in the passport it was quite obvious. After another phone call we were then let go without any forthcoming explanation. On leaving NZ a similar thing occurred at the outbound security desk. I asked what was going on and was told that there was an “asterisk” against my details on their computer. No further information was given and after a few minutes and phone calls we were allowed through.

On getting home I did some research. The only thing I could find was that someone with the same name as my nine year old was wanted for multiple murders.

[DaveReidUK]

UK e-gates always reject my passport regardless of airport. It works fine at those overseas airports that will accept UK biometric passports. As mentioned in earlier posts Border Force agents won’t tell you what the problem is but I have, I think, managed to solicit the information that someone with a similar name is on a list. And separately, that I shouldn’t even bother trying to use an e- gate and that there is nothing wrong with my passport. It’s frustrating not knowing how long this problem will go on, and s ems extraordinary that having been checked by an officer once my record can’t be marked as OK.

My previous passport never worked in the Heathrow e-gates during its entire 10-year life.

What was particularly irritating was the insistence of the jobsworths at LHR (HAL, not Border Force) that I should nevertheless queue up at the e-gates every time instead of simply going direct to the manual inspection desks.

[PAXboy]

According to my (impeccable) source, the kind of things that can affect reading of the chip are it being bent - if had been sat on - and a couple of other things, such as moisture getting in through a partial (but invisible) separation of the seal around the chip. When I said that the gates at LHR reject me more than 75% of the time, they were not suprised (they know LHR extraordinarily well). I said that I thought it would be quicker to go straight to the manual desk and they replied, that might well be the best thing to do - depending on the various queue lengths.

Mrs PAXboy goes through first time every time. The gates at LTN do not seem to be so picky. My passport even opened the gate in VCE last year!!

[Asturias56]

UK gates seem to be set at a higher pass mark than just about any others I use -

[PAXboy]

In my experience, it is random. LHR have let me through and not. More often not.

[Mr Mac]

I find that UK Passport at Manchester involves more often than not a chat with an officer. I don’t use LHR much but was there in December and it worked fine.

Cheers
Mr Mac

[Lomon]

I haven't found one yet that works at LHR, MAN, GLA, EDI or ABN.
Recently I've been flying in and out of EDI every few weeks and it is so annoying being told to queue up for the e-gate when you know it won't work and when you ask to just go to a person they tell you no.
At Christmas I did suggest to one of the jobsworth "cattle handlers" that I would bet them £10 that the e-gate wouldn't work with my passport - that seemed to shut them up.

[davidjohnson6]

The people telling arriving pax to queue up... do they have any formal legal authority besides wearing bright pink/yellow/green/orange vests ? As far as I'm aware they do not work for police, customs or Border Force. I've seen lots of people at building sites wearing similiar vests, but they don't normally have any legal powers beyond ordinary citizens.

[PAXboy]

If you know the gate won't (or probably won't) work - but are directed to the queue: When you are the next person for the e-gate, just turn and go straight to the human. This at least saves waiting for the gate to reject you.

[davidjohnson6]

Why join the e-gate queue at all if you know it is not going to work ? AFAIK, the people directing you to the e-gate queue have no power of arrest and have probably been told not to touch a passenger physically without consent for fear of a legal claim of assault. Everything will be on camera, so if they start pulling or pushing you physically, the evidence is readily available. Would be extremely difficult to make a charge of terrorism stick against a person refusing to join the e-gate queue and choosing the manual queue instead.

If I knew my passport would (with very high probability) not work in the e gates, I would walk straight past the cattle handler, join the manual queue and just not say anything at all to person telling me to join other queue. It's extremely difficult for a person without the power of arrest to (legally) do anything against you when you join a valid queue peacefully - you just have to be willing to call a person's bluff occasionally.
(Note - Mrs Johnson occasionally describes me as an aggressive little s**t who gets away with stuff)

[Asturias56]

"Why join the e-gate queue at all if you know it is not going to work ? AFAIK, the people directing you to the e-gate queue have no power of arrest and have probably been told not to touch a passenger physically without consent for fear of a legal claim of assault. Everything will be on camera, so if they start pulling or pushing you physically, the evidence is readily available. Would be extremely difficult to make a charge of terrorism stick against a person refusing to join the e-gate queue and choosing the manual queue instead."

Because I want to get out ASAP - not spend 4 hours in a small room waiting for an expensive lawyer to "enforce my rights" - and be splashed all over Social Media