Fingerprints, face scans at Heathrow's Terminal 5

Irritated with the requirement of being fingerprinted when visiting the United States? Brace yourself: Soon you will have to do so when visiting the United Kingdom. Domestic passengers departing from Heathrow’s Terminal 5, which opens in March, will have to give a fingerprint and have their faces scanned as part of a security check before take-off. The checks are implemented because both domestic and international passengers will share a common departure lounge and the authorities are worried that those arriving on international flights may be able to bypass immigration control by booking an onward domestic flight to a regional airport. The Daily Telegraph’s Jeremy Skidmore writes that International passengers departing through Terminal 5 will be subject to the normal checks and controls but will not undergo face scans or have to provide a fingerprint. At Gatwick, which also has a shared departure lounge for all passengers, domestic travellers already have their photographs taken.

Beginning this fall, passengers arriving at ten U.S. airports, including New York JFK, Chicago, Miami, and Boston, will have to give fingerprints of all ten fingers, raising fears of increased delays. Bob Mocny, the acting director of the US-Visit Program, which runs immigration security, said the new technology would improve safety and, eventually, be a fast system. He said the same system would be introduced across Europe in the future. The Home Office, however, said this week that it has no plans to insist on fingerprints for incoming passengers. “We take fingerprints across 80 different countries from people when they apply for visas and have stopped 4,000 people from coming in,” said a Home Office spokeswoman.

The fingerprinting and face scans at Terminal 5 are part of broader improvements in security at Heathrow, Gatwick, and Stansted, which include the introduction of flat scanners that can read the new biometric indicators in e-passports.