DUBAI: 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.
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.
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.
