Passengers to pay for 'immigration queue jump'
Passengers may soon be able to pay to queue jump at immigration at Heathrow, BAA says
Also In The News
|
By Alistair Potter. |  |
Monday, 05, Oct 2009 03:26
By Sarah Garrod.
Passengers may soon be able to pay to jump the queue at immigration at two of London's airports, BAA has confirmed.
Those returning from overseas will be able to take part in a trial, to be introduced next year, which has been designed to reduce delays and allow people faster movement through arrivals.
The fast-track gates will be charged at £40 or £50 a year, allowing regular travellers, or anyone wanting to jump the queue, to fast-track their way through immigration.
They will be installed with biometric passport readers at Stansted and Heathrow, and anyone with the updated version of the passport will be able to jump the queue free of charge.
A spokesperson for BBA told inthenews.co.uk: "This will be entirely digressional. We estimate it will cost in the region of £40 to £50 annually.
"At the end of the day it's a discretionary payment that might make your life a bit easier coming through an airport; you don't have to buy it. The more regularly you fly the more cost effective it will become."
The scheme will cost around £7 million to introduce at Heathrow, an amount it is hoped will be made back by the charging of the service.
Not everyone in the country has a biometric passport, as they were only introduced a few years ago, but the passport office will upgrade a current passport to a biometric one for a fee.
Many passengers can already jump the immigration queue by undergoing the IRIS test which matches passengers' eyes against their information on a database.