Processing of arriving passengers will be faster with more upgraded e-gates -- BI
Processing of arriving passengers in the country will soon be faster with the upgrading of the Bureau of Immigration's (BI) electonic gates (e-gates) at the airports and the procurement of more units.
Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco said the bureau is currently in the process of upgrading all of the existing e-gates or the unmanned electronic immigration counters installed at the country’s airports and is set to procure more units to replace 25 percent of manual operations..
Once upgraded, Tansingco said that passenger data from airlines will be connected to the e-gates.
“As a result of the upgrade, travelers can expect the removal of the scanning of boarding passes when using the e-gates. This can further lessen the processing time for arriving passengers,” the bureau said.
It said it has received reports that “some passengers are unable to use the e-gates when their flight record is not yet integrated in the system.”
“Due to this, passengers have to transfer to regular counters to be processed manually,” it admitted.
It said that e-gates are also being reconfigured to be label free such that "instead of printing a sticker to be attached on the passport, passengers will receive an email acknowledging their arrival" as it noted that "this is the best practice that we are emulating from other countries."