I’ve read in several newspapers that the IRIS Scheme will soon be going away. The government here has already closed the terminals at 2 airports….leaving only the terminals at Heathrow and Gatwick open. From the Register:
Travellers apparently had a lot of trouble lining up their eyes with the iris recognition camera, resulting in the identification taking a lot longer than it was supposed to. Other passengers wouldn’t be recognised at all by the computer system and ended up having to be manually checked anyway.
I for one have never had those problems. Every time I re-enter the UK, I head straight for the IRIS queue. There’s usually 3 to 4 people waiting, I line my eyes up, and go through…. Less than 1 minute. I don’t even have to remove my glasses. I think it is an awesome scheme. Oh well….they told me when I registered that the scheme would be going away and replaced by one that uses biometric passports. We’ll see…..
Image from ahmed via flickr