Border SmartGate

The Herald reports:

Transtasman travel has become a lot easier with the introduction of the SmartGate system at Auckland Airport.

Prime Minister John Key became the first person to sign in with the new technology yesterday.

Customs NZ deputy controller John Secker said the opening of Auckland’s SmartGate was the single biggest development in border processing in 20 years.

Passengers with Australian or New Zealand electronic passports can now fast-track into the country by using a new automated system.

Travellers scan their passports at a kiosk, answer a few questions using a touch screen and are issued with a ticket.

At the gate, a camera scans the passenger’s face using biometric facial recognition technology.

If there is a match with the image stored in the passport, the gate opens.

They have a similar system in Dubai, and I was very impressed with it. You can do pretty much everything yourself – even putting your bags through the x-ray, scanning the passport.

Great to see this move to make trans-tasman travel more hassle-free. Now if only someone could fix Wellington Airport so the security scans are done before the Koru Club, not afterwards. Auckland Airport is vastly more efficient with one security point for the airport.