New gates will cut Edinburgh Airport queues in half

ELECTRONIC security gates to cut passport queues by half are to be introduced at Scotland’s busiest airport, The Scotsman has learned.

The move by Edinburgh airport and the UK Border Agency will see the automatic equipment used for the first time at a Scottish airport to increase the speed with which passengers clear immigration.

The five gates will be installed in two weeks’ time as part of a package of measures to reduce delays and congestion at the airport, which handles 9.3 million passengers a year.

The passenger total is growing at nearly 8 per cent a year, with last August the airport’s busiest month since civilian flights started in 1947.

An extra two X-ray machines will be added to the hand-baggage search area in May, while airline check-in desks have been moved around to make the best use of space.

UK and other European Union passengers will be able to use the “ePassport” gates rather than the traditional manual check by officials.

They will insert their passports in the machines to allow an electronic chip containing details of facial dimensions – scanned from their passport photo – to be compared to an image of their face transmitted from a camera on the gate.

The new gates will help ease specific crunch points, such as late on Thursday evenings when five flights arrive within 30 minutes and only three staffed gates are in operation.

The UK Border Agency operates up to eight staffed passport gates at the airport.

The new gates are in use at several major English airports, including Heathrow.

The additional X-ray machines at Edinburgh, to be operational in late May, will boost the total to 12.

Managing director Jim O’Sullivan said: “At peak times, the gates will significantly reduce queuing times, and even halve them. Everybody travelling through here should have a better time of it.

“We had our busiest summer ever last year and have reorganised our check-in desks to avoid having long queues in front of the main doors.”

Mr O’Sullivan said the airlines had been moved around to avoid large numbers of passengers checking in for flights at adjacent desks.

EasyJet, the airport’s biggest airline, welcomed the new gates. Spokesman Paul Moore said: “We support measures to reduce queuing times and know from our research this is one of our passengers’ greatest concerns.”

The airport has suffered major security queue delays in the past, which were attacked as “unacceptable” by airlines and passengers seven years ago.

The problems, partly caused by soaring passenger numbers, have been largely solved by a new passenger and hand luggage security check area, which was opened as part of a major extension of the terminal in 2010.

Mr Sullivan, who was previously BAA’s technical standards and assurance director and is a former Concorde general manager for British Airways, was appointed MD of the airport last August amid uncertainty over its future.

Mr O’Sullivan said he expected the airport to be in new hands by June or July at the latest following the completion of its sale by owner BAA.

The Scotsman understands there are two remaining bidders in the race - JP Morgan Asset Management and Global Infrastructure Partners. Final bids are due to be submitted in late April and the winner is expected to be announced in May.

BAA, which owned by the Spanish conglomerate Ferrovial, chose to sell Edinburgh over Glasgow after being ordered to offload one of them to meet the requirements of a Competition Commission investigation.