The DUB Passport/Immigration Queue Thread

plodder

In any case, as said above, it should just be a matter of installing more e-gates, assuming enough space is available, and they can be made to operate reliably enough such that several of them can be monitored by one human. Dublin has the advantage (over Munich) of a single large immigration hall, as opposed to separate facilities at each gate.

Fred Swanson

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plodder

Depends where you're coming from and the terminal maybe. But, the original terminal (1) which is where Ryanair fly in to from Dublin, handles immigration at the gate. It's fairly horrible, space restricted. There isn't the space to add more e-gates from what I could see.

The Veteran

Plodder, Dublin doesn’t have a single large immigration hall - it has four immigration areas serving different routes\profiles with a fifth coming next Summer when the new Transfer area opens.

We thought we were turning on the second 5 today in T1 but didn’t happen; need to see the full 10 up and running to see the impact I suppose.

Irish Steve

Just come back in through T1 this evening, due at 18:15, actual arrival 18:30, no queues at all at immigration, went straight to a booth, and there were several with no queue. Didn't count the number of booths open, and at that time, I don't think anyone was being diverted through the E-Gates.

The Veteran

Additional 5 Gates went live today; 10 in total now in T1. Another step on the way.

Biggest issues today were some older abusive passengers, oh well!

Fred Swanson

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Stephen Strange

Fred Swanson wrote: »

Is it not mandatory to use the gates.

Nope

trellheim

No. Neither is it mandatory to have a passport.

Came through tonight T2 3 out of 10 gates in service. Rude pinkshirts shouting at people to put passports in correctly. Perhaps that should be the job of the immigration staff.

Through with driving license at the hatch

The Veteran

Yawn! Passports are required from those who require to possess and present them in the relevant circumstances.

There were 3 of 5 deployed Gates available (or whatever number out of 5 that were in fact available) - no secret, 10 are not deployed, 10 may be installed in t2 but they are not all deployed.

plodder

I notice some countries have quite elaborate information online, including videos on how to use e-gates. I can't find anything online here.

There is a non-functioning link from dublinairport.com to www.inis.gov.ie, but that site seems to be all about immigration info for non-nationals - strange considering a very significant chunk of their "customers" would surely be Irish citizens.

They need to put some information up, particularly details like having to remove any cover from your passport before approaching the gates. Obviously not everyone will read it, but the kind of people most likely to complain here, probably will

ohnonotgmail

plodder wrote: »

I notice some countries have quite elaborate information online, including videos on how to use e-gates. I can't find anything online here.

There is a non-functioning link from dublinairport.com to www.inis.gov.ie, but that site seems to be all about immigration info for non-nationals - strange considering a very significant chunk of their "customers" would surely be Irish citizens.

They need to put some information up, particularly details like having to remove any cover from your passport before approaching the gates. Obviously not everyone will read it, but the kind of people most likely to complain here, probably will

is that information not displayed before you get to the gate?

BigMoose

Landed on EK161 a week ago and the passport queue in T2 was back down the pier. A pink bib guy radioed someone to complain it was "back to 408" (wasn't that far when I joined, but was out back level with the escalators down) and he was complaining not all booths were open. By the time I got there all were open and it took 15 mins in total. Cant complain at that time given the amount of people and I was very pleased to see the reaction of the pink bib guy and that they then opened more booths to deal with the demand. I ended up going through a manned booth not an egate as they seemed to be confusing people and taking longer.

munchkin_utd

plodder wrote: »

They need to put some information up, particularly details like having to remove any cover from your passport before approaching the gates. <snip>

why would you need to remove a cover from a passport?
The information is inside , not on the outside which the cover is protecting.

Grand, if the cover were obscuring the info page (say its printed on the inside of the front or back cover) then it has to go, but thats not the case with Irish passports at any rate.

Mebuntu

BigMoose wrote: »

Landed on EK161 a week ago and the passport queue in T2 was back down the pier. A pink bib guy radioed someone to complain it was "back to 408" (wasn't that far when I joined, but was out back level with the escalators down) and he was complaining not all booths were open. By the time I got there all were open and it took 15 mins in total. Cant complain at that time given the amount of people and I was very pleased to see the reaction of the pink bib guy and that they then opened more booths to deal with the demand. I ended up going through a manned booth not an egate as they seemed to be confusing people and taking longer.

That's been one of the problems all along. The inability of the authorities to be aware in advance that so many are about to arrive and be ready for them when they do - not being awoken from their apathy by a pink bib guy telling them that there's a mile long queue.

ohnonotgmail

munchkin_utd wrote: »

why would you need to remove a cover from a passport?
The information is inside , not on the outside which the cover is protecting.

Grand, if the cover were obscuring the info page (say its printed on the inside of the front or back cover) then it has to go, but thats not the case with Irish passports at any rate.

you feed the passport into the machine. a cover can make the passport too big to fit.

tringle

Mebuntu wrote: »

That's been one of the problems all along. The inability of the authorities to be aware in advance that so many are about to arrive and be ready for them when they do - not being awoken from their apathy by a pink bib guy telling them that there's a mile long queue.

Its not like people are arriving randomly from nowhere. They are on an airplane and the airport has the exact time of arrival and how many are on it...why can't they be ready.

plodder

munchkin_utd wrote: »

why would you need to remove a cover from a passport?
The information is inside , not on the outside which the cover is protecting.

Grand, if the cover were obscuring the info page (say its printed on the inside of the front or back cover) then it has to go, but thats not the case with Irish passports at any rate.

The passport doesn't fit in the scanning machine with a cover on. At least the cover I have doesn't fit, but I hope that the (clear) cover that the passport office supplies with new passports does fit. That would be embarrassing if it didn't.

is that information not displayed before you get to the gate?

Yes it is, but you could easily miss it, in the melee, and it's always better to provide info like this ahead of time. It could be the difference between The Veteran enduring years of abuse from elderly passengers, or maybe only months of it

ohnonotgmail

plodder wrote: »

The passport doesn't fit in the scanning machine with a cover on. At least the cover I have doesn't fit, but I hope that the (clear) cover that the passport office supplies with new passports does fit. That would be embarrassing if it didn't.


Yes it is, but you could easily miss it, in the melee, and it's always better to provide info like this ahead of time. It could be the difference between The Veteran enduring years of abuse from elderly passengers, or maybe only months of it

the people who dont see the info on the way to the gate dont generally tend to look ahead of time for info.

Baller23

the very same people don't actually read anything or look up from their telephones, can't tell you how many times people have walked up on top of me as I've waited to be processed

plodder

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

the people who dont see the info on the way to the gate dont generally tend to look ahead of time for info.

in many cases yes, but that's hardly an argument for not doing it. What does it cost to add a page of useful info to an existing web site? Half an hour of work, or an hour at the outside?

ohnonotgmail

plodder wrote: »

in many cases yes, but that's hardly an argument for not doing it. What does it cost to add a page of useful info to an existing web site? Half an hour of work, or an hour at the outside?

they could spend many multiples of that time doing it. and the net benefit would be close to zero.

plodder

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

they could spend many multiples of that time doing it. and the net benefit would be close to zero.

Sure, the state can spend many multiples of what it needs on anything

The Germans made a whole website about it (in English too)

https://www.easypass.de/EasyPass/EN/What_is_EasyPASS/home_node.html

and I don't see why we should go that far. Is that your concern that because the Germans did that, we would have to as well .. if we do anything

ohnonotgmail

plodder wrote: »

Sure, the state can spend many multiples of what it needs on anything

The Germans made a whole website about it (in English too)

https://www.easypass.de/EasyPass/EN/What_is_EasyPASS/home_node.html

and I don't see why we should go that far. Is that your concern that because the Germans did that, we would have to as well .. if we do anything

i'm not concerned about it at all. i just think it would have no benefit

Doylers

plodder wrote: »

munchkin_utd wrote: »

why would you need to remove a cover from a passport?
The information is inside  , not on the outside which the cover is protecting.
 
Grand, if the cover were obscuring the info page (say its printed on the inside of the front or back cover) then it has to go, but thats not the case with Irish passports at any rate.

The passport doesn't fit in the scanning machine with a cover on. At least the cover I have doesn't fit, but I hope that the (clear) cover that the passport office supplies with new passports does fit. That would be embarrassing if it didn't.

is that information not displayed before you get to the gate?

Yes it is, but you could easily miss it, in the melee, and it's always better to provide info like this ahead of time. It could be the difference between The Veteran enduring years of abuse from elderly passengers, or maybe only months of it

Mine is brand new and the cover had to be removed to work with the gate

trellheim

With regard to the signage it is woefully inadequate it does not cater in any way for telling you what documentation you must present based on origin, all it tells you is that an EU biometric passport might work in the gates if you're over 18.

Irish Steve

trellheim wrote: »

With regard to the signage it is woefully inadequate it does not cater in any way for telling you what documentation you must present based on origin, all it tells you is that an EU biometric passport might work in the gates if you're over 18.

Ahh, so that's what it says. When we came through on Wednesday evening, there were 2 screens showing some information all right, but for the entire time they were visible to us, the only language displayed was Irish, which was/is not exactly helpful, and is meaningless to probably 95% of the people passing through T1.

Jawgap

Irish Steve wrote: »

Ahh, so that's what it says. When we came through on Wednesday evening, there were 2 screens showing some information all right, but for the entire time they were visible to us, the only language displayed was Irish, which was/is not exactly helpful, and is meaningless to probably 95% of the people passing through T1.

Likewise today.

Plus the non-EU queue (today, approx 1pm, T1) was all the way out of the hall to the bottom of the stairs.......with another queue (to join the queue into hall) at the top of stairs!

Zipped through to the desks (practically zero queue for EU passport holders, I've no issue with that!) to find the one person in front of me was non-EU and the INIS person decided to process them......that's the 2nd time I've seen INIS do this in the last 4 trips through T1 over the last 4/5 weeks.

Anyone know why INIS don't just send people who do that to the right queue?

Fred Swanson

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killbillvol2

Jawgap wrote: »

Likewise today.

Plus the non-EU queue (today, approx 1pm, T1) was all the way out of the hall to the bottom of the stairs.......with another queue (to join the queue into hall) at the top of stairs!

Zipped through to the desks (practically zero queue for EU passport holders, I've no issue with that!) to find the one person in front of me was non-EU and the INIS person decided to process them......that's the 2nd time I've seen INIS do this in the last 4 trips through T1 over the last 4/5 weeks.

Anyone know why INIS don't just send people who do that to the right queue?

I've chanced my arm more than once in the wrong queue in various Asian airports where there were horrendous queues, even in China where "laissez faire" is not a concept. If your visa/paperwork is in order it's no big deal for them to process you. Worst case scenario they'll send you to rejoin a queue.

On a side note, you seem to have extraordinary powers of observation, hearing and eyesight. You've more than once been able to tell us of conversations at desks other than the one you're using, and now the nationality of the person in front of you. I think the country would be a safer place if you were manning one of those desks.