IRIS to be decommisioned from 15th/16 September 2013

For a lot of travellers, the last thing any of us want to see is a mile long immigration queue when entering a territory.

For those entering the United Kingdom, there are three main methods:

• By Interview with an immigration agent
• Via an ePassport and eGate (for EU/ECC passport holders)
• Via IRIS

IRIS required users to register for the service, and for pictures of the users iris taken as a Biometric Recognition for entry. This allowed travellers to clear immigration quite quickly (I averaged under 30 seconds after lining up for it).

However, it has suffered from some users being unable to use it, and with ePassports taking more popularity, IRIS has been slowly wound down since 2012 from non-London airports.

Well it seems the curtain is falling at Heathrow T3 and T5 with the following posted on the UK Border Agency Web site – http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/customs-travel/Enteringtheuk/usingiris/

Text:

The iris recognition immigration system (IRIS) will close in London Heathrow airport at Terminal 3 on 15 September 2013 and at Terminal 5 on 16 September 2013.

Our IRIS email service will remain open for 6 months until 21 March 2014 to allow IRIS passengers who need a record of their travel history to make a subject access request.

Once our email service is closed, all information on the IRIS database will be destroyed as required by IRIS.

There is a lot of disquiet (especially in the British Airways Flyertalk forum).

Whilst ePassport is meant to be a replacement it can only be currently used by EU/ECC residents. IRIS used to be able handle registered passengers not just from the EU, but from other territories hose registered that UKBA who were happy to process.

The ePassport gates are also notoriously slow (from personal experience it’s taken on average 1-2 minutes to clear it compared to IRIS – and as such for EU/ECC Citizens, it can be quicker to line up for the immigration agent counters.

The cost of this 7 year operation? £9 million.

Hopefully the ePassport gates will speed up – but for those entering the United Kingdom… expect more of those wonderful queues you’ve been used too….