I may have been just plain lucky in the past but . . . . I can’t see what the fuss is about re making the trans-Tasman border faster and easier to cross.
I appreciate that, just as electronic ticketing has sped up most check-in procedures, so the inevitable move to electronic passport scanning will save a few minutes each trip. But will it produce huge efficiencies? I don’t see it.
Instead of having to queue at the immigration booth when arriving on each side of the Tasman, we’ll queue for our turn at a passport scanning machine, try to work out how to use it, and then perhaps queue again in the “manual system” if you’re unlucky enough (as I was recently) to see the machine complain about something in your passport.
Those cheerleading the automation of border crossings talk enthusiastically of saving huge amounts of time in queues. One local newspaper columnist I read recently embellished his tale of a tiring trip to Melbourne with groans about struggling through countless arrival queues. Ahem …. there are two of them, unless you count the duty-free shop checkout (not compulsory) or are unlucky enough to get a full luggage frisking.
As I said, perhaps I’ve just been lucky. But I do an Australian trip on average once a year, and I did three return trips within as many months on family matters around the start of this year. That’s six queuing adventures – and not one of them took more than 15 minutes total from arriving in the immigration lounge to leaving the terminal building. In general, most of that time was spent waiting for luggage to emerge – which passport machines will not help.
And it’s been several years since I’ve had to wait longer than five minutes to move from the public departure area through immigration and security to the departure gate lounge. Is this a good reason in itself to pay millions for automated border processes? Yes, the move to this type of technology is inevitable, but please don’t over-egg it by assuring us that huge hunks of time will be saved for travellers.
One really good result of this advance, however, could be that the ridiculous rules about checking in at least two hours before departure can be significantly relaxed. A 6am departure for Brisbane is painful enough, but having to check in before 4am is irritatingly absurd. We can all easily manage half-hour check-ins for domestic flights, and I’m positive that one hour for international flights will be easy for everyone.
I’ll become a fan of automated passport clearance if the two-hour check-in rule is halved.
