The DUB Passport/Immigration Queue Thread

L1011

Signage for the e-gates doesn't even suggest you can't use passport cards; which is a bit of an issue. Suspect DAA rather than INIS responsibility as its signage?

California Dreamer

Dr. Bre wrote: »

Thought the Garda don’t check passports anymore ? Immigration control officers do

Honestly it could have been Father Ted and I would still care that it was only 1 person manning the desks on a TA flight at 8am!

Podge_irl

L1011 wrote: »

Signage for the e-gates doesn't even suggest you can't use passport cards; which is a bit of an issue. Suspect DAA rather than INIS responsibility as its signage?

You can use passport cards in them.

LXFlyer

Podge_irl wrote: »

You can use passport cards in them.

That must be a relatively new development as you certainly couldn’t last time I asked?

LoonyLovegood

Went through Saturday morning off a US flight and was pleasantly surprised! Although it was one of the US carriers, so it looked like the non-EU was fairly full of passengers, but the EU side was almost empty with two gates open and about 10 people waiting. I was through before the first bag had reached the carousel from my plane. I know we like moaning about it here, and sometimes it's just, but when it works it deserves some credit.

munchkin_utd

Podge_irl wrote: »

You can use passport cards in them.

Last Friday I arrived into T1 and went to use a passport card and some young fella there wouldn't let me near the gates because they allegedly didn't work there. The signs said anything with the chip should work, no mention of passport cards not working.
So either the machines are still not working or the training of staff isnt working.
Thankfully the queue for EU was minimal and I was scanned and through in no time.

The Non EU queue on the other hand had maybe 100 people waiting for a few counters, of which at least 2 were "blocked" by disputes over paperwork / visas or whatever.

I'm wondering should there be a split queue for visa waiver / non visa waiver for non EU arrivals, because theres no point in holding the likes of Americans or Canadians who cause very few complications, whilst a couple of families from the 3rd world block the entire queue with their dodgy paperwork

I'd add too, a few pages back people were whinging about Munich being the model of ineptitude. When I landed yesterday off Ryanair into T1-B they had 4 manned desks plus the 3 or 4 epassport stalls, and just for that one Dublin flight.
After passing through the place dozens of times, I've only ever once had a bad immigration experience in Munich and (similar to Dublin last Friday) thats when we arrived after a flight from Russia where a few had dodgy paperwork and held up the whole show

trellheim

I had not heard the passport card situation had been resolved

EdgeCase

One simple breakdown you could have:

IE/UK passport holders
EU/EEA/Swiss passport / ID card holders.

Given the volume of traffic from North America, perhaps a US, Canada (and a few other commonly visiting countries desk?)

Then the general "all other countries" desk ?

LXFlyer

EdgeCase wrote: »

One simple breakdown you could have:

IE/UK passport holders
EU/EEA/Swiss passport / ID card holders.

Given the volume of traffic from North America, perhaps a US, Canada (and a few other commonly visiting countries desk?)

Then the general "all other countries" desk ?

Don’t think that would be allowed under EU law.

goingnowhere

All EEA must be treated this same

Nothing stopping a registered traveller style scheme for non EEA and automatically enroll US, CA and a pile of other friendly nations, JP, AU, NZ etc

EdgeCase

LXFlyer wrote: »

Don’t think that would be allowed under EU law.

Other EU countries do it to us with Schengen only facilities we can’t use. I was a absolutely not treated the same in CDG recently and was pulled out of a line and processed as “non schengen”

TJJP

EdgeCase wrote: »

One simple breakdown you could have:

IE/UK passport holders
EU/EEA/Swiss passport / ID card holders.

Given the volume of traffic from North America, perhaps a US, Canada (and a few other commonly visiting countries desk?)

Then the general "all other countries" desk ?

You mean a first-world / third-world type approach or something more akin to the South Africa 1950s to 1990s approach?

A proper alternative might be for the DAA to use the fees it levies on passengers (look at a ticket breakdown sometime) to actually provide the services it charges its customers for.

EdgeCase

TJJP wrote: »

You mean a first-world / third-world type approach or something more akin to the South Africa 1950s to 1990s approach?

A proper alternative might be for the DAA to use the fees it levies on passengers (look at a ticket breakdown sometime) to actually provide the services it charges its customers for.

Nope but there’s a huge difference between processing say tourists visa waivers vs non visa waivers. People are being categorised based on bilateral visa arrangements between Ireland and their country of citizenship, not race, colour or religion. The comparison with Apartheid South Africa is nonsense.

There are also plenty of developing countries that have visa waivers into Ireland for tourism / business, exactly the same as the USA, Canada, Aussies etc etc

See:
S.I. No. 473 of 2014 - IMMIGRATION ACT 2004 (VISAS) ORDER 2014

https://www.dfa.ie/media/dfa/alldfawebsitemedia/travel/en.si.2014.0473.pdf

You’ll see there’s a very extensive number of countries’ passport holders entitled to visit without a visa.

You could have “Short Stay / Visa Waiver”
“Long Stay & Visa Required”

Also what’s going to happen post 2019 if the UK becomes “non EU/EEA” yet, the CTA still exists ? We are going to need CTA gates.

Podge_irl

LXFlyer wrote: »

That must be a relatively new development as you certainly couldn’t last time I asked?

I could be wrong (obviously).

Maybe they are supposed to work with passport cards is the more correct statement. Had not realised the weren't working properly.

LXFlyer

Podge_irl wrote: »

I could be wrong (obviously).

Maybe they are supposed to work with passport cards is the more correct statement. Had not realised the weren't working properly.

They have not worked since the gates were launched.

I’m sure that The Veteran can update us if the situation has changed.

LXFlyer

EdgeCase wrote: »

Other EU countries do it to us with Schengen only facilities we can’t use. I was a absolutely not treated the same in CDG recently and was pulled out of a line and processed as “non schengen”

Other countries completely segregate Schengen flights and non-Schengen - I’m not aware of any airport where they mix?

The Veteran

Irish Pssport Cards: the eGates can technically process them but it needs precise placement by the user (ie you guys) to work successfully. If you get the placement wrong, the machine thinks it is dealing with a pssport and will not therefore do certain things (which it does to a card) and as a consequence it causes the transaction to fail with the card jammed in the reader usually. Hence, the official position is that Irish Passport Cards are not to be used in them, not they can’t be (to be fully correct about it). The supplier was supposed to have put a new piece of kit into the reader but that has not happened yet.

On the subject of cards more generally, there is no international standard applicable to cards and therefore the Gates process those that are designed to the same spec as an Irish passport card (and compliant with ICAO standard 9303).

I have said on here before most countries that accept cards on their Gates only accept their own countries because of the lack of a standard.

Queue set up: EU rules apply and therefore all EEA NATIONALS must be treated the same; priority cannot be given to Irish or any other national.

Schengen - the poster who said they were treated differently in another airport - flight gets entering Schengen are dealt with as a non Schengen arrival and are subject to the Schengen Border Code. This does not differentiate between nationalities rather the origin of the flight.

Visa versus Non Visa: if you look at the numbers refused over recent years - the top 5 countries will show you that a visa exempt country (Brazil) is number 1 and that US nationals are in there.

The legal requirements of Section 4 of the Immigration Act 2004’must be complied with by a non-national irrespective of whether they need a visa or not. In fact, someone possessing a visa has already been through a range of checks; non visa required people just show up with sometimes mad stories; dodgy stories and many “tourists” are in reality coming to work or have history!

Pat Dunne

Came across the following article. My own feeling on the matter is that as we are now in high season it is to be expected.
http://www.thejournal.ie/passport-control-queues-4104915-Jul2018/

Noxegon

I really wish GNIB cardholders could use the EU queue. My other half frequently gets stuck for 45 mins waiting to get through.

trellheim

Probably difficult, but staffing the other immigration desks - the 300s - and bussing some inbounds to go through there - especially at peak inbound round midnight - might work very well as a queue buster

EdgeCase

I notice in reviews of Dublin Airport online when it's quiet it gets very good reviews and when it's busy they turn very negative, and mostly around things that seem to be lack of capacity.

Issues that come up are :

1. Immigration / customs.
2. Toilets (people complaining about queues and also finding toilets in poor condition.)
3. Lack of facilities beyond US immigration (this is also a lost opportunity for the airport).

T1 also gets poor reviews and is seen as tatty and dated.

A major revamp and capacity handling increase at T1 and moving the CTA inbound flights there would make a lot of sense to reduce time. Although, with Brexit, we've no idea what's going to be required for those. Either way, it's a high % of the traffic through DUB and it's also a group of flights and passengers that need to be handled through a different process.

It's going to become a right pain if you've got to do a customs declaration coming in from the UK, which is looking quite likely the way things are going with the Brexit negotiations.

The Veteran

trellheim wrote: »

Probably difficult, but staffing the other immigration desks - the 300s - and bussing some inbounds to go through there - especially at peak inbound round midnight - might work very well as a queue buster

Wouldn’t even have to be the 300s; T2 is massively underutilized at that time of night (Terminal wise), the bussing could be to T2 (and before it’s said I know that would complicate the baggage handling side of things).

The attraction of bussing to the 300s is obviously T1 pax staying in T1 but the problem then becomes a numbers game for the immigration side.

andy_g

The Veteran wrote: »

Wouldn’t even have to be the 300s; T2 is massively underutilized at that time of night (Terminal wise), the bussing could be to T2 (and before it’s said I know that would complicate the baggage handling side of things).

The attraction of bussing to the 300s is obviously T1 pax staying in T1 but the problem then becomes a numbers game for the immigration side.

Bussing already comes into T2 from the stobarts and South gates, the problem for T2 is that there is no designated bus zones.

Currently they bus them into the CBP gates then up the stair to arrivals. Even then i believe staff are jumping from gate to gate to allow arrivals while airlines look to use the gates above

California Dreamer

Dublin Airport Twitter:

It's our busiest time of the year, so if you're travelling today, we advise you go directly to security screening after check-in.
Be sure to present liquids under 100mls in a transparent re-sealable bag separately at security screening. One bag per passenger & the bag must close.

That didn't encourage them to have the foresight to talk to GNIB to arrange extra personal in T2 tonight. The quest started from before the tunnel. Took about 45 minutes to get through.

Wait for it......FOUR....automated machines working!!!!! Twice as many as I have ever seen.

The Veteran

California Dreamer wrote: »

Dublin Airport Twitter:

It's our busiest time of the year, so if you're travelling today, we advise you go directly to security screening after check-in.
Be sure to present liquids under 100mls in a transparent re-sealable bag separately at security screening. One bag per passenger & the bag must close.



That didn't encourage them to have the foresight to talk to GNIB to arrange extra personal in T2 tonight. The quest started from before the tunnel. Took about 45 minutes to get through.



Wait for it......FOUR....automated machines working!!!!! Twice as many as I have ever seen.

Nothing to do with GNIB!

California Dreamer

The Veteran wrote: »

Nothing to do with GNIB!

But you wouldn't think to actually tell me who. So the Garda, or the civilian contractors. I don't really care, it could be leprechauns! I would like to be through in a timely manner.

trellheim

For information the Gardai have handed over Immigration duties to INIS now for quite some time.

There is a contact us page here http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Pages/Customer_Services


Do not expect anything from DAA redshirts or Dublin Airport twitter, useless doesn't begin to cover that account.

Are there sufficient INIS staff to have every booth and autogate open in these summer months, given it is the airports busiest ever time ?

The Veteran

Californian Dreamer - the crest on the front of the booths and on officer uniforms tell you who run the controls; I can’t be responsible for your igonorance of the facts on the ground. Plus the primary concern of officers concerns the operation of effective controls not fast ones as you see it. The reality is that an EU passenger is through in 3 to 5 minutes on an average basis.

Tyrell - there are significant resource and other pressures at present. Not helped by the imminent opening of a fifth control area (but not caused by it).

There are more people being stopped in recent years than ever before and more people being placed before the Courts (or cases in preparation) than has been the case for years. And yes, the airport is busier than ever.

Spanish Eyes

Due respect to those manning the desks and so on.

But reading Veteran's points, it seems to be a big communications issue now.

Most arrivals just want to get through and get home. They don't care about all the bureaucracy/Union/Garda/INIS issues involved. Not saying that Veteran raised these issues either, but when you are waiting in line, you think these things!

Communicate please and inform us.

In fairness I have more issues with the control freaks that are DAA telling us where to go in a snaking Q. now.

At least immigration has legislatory backup.

When you are tired after a long flight, it can be a pain. But hopefully will improve over time.

There are pinch points that need to be catered for in the roster. Just my view.

I am sorry, but I get the red rage when told by DAA to snake around and obey their rules that have nothing to do with immigration controls.

The Veteran

The issue is that we now have effective immigration controls - we didn’t prior to 2015. The roster in place matches the schedule and there is flexibility.

If airlines stopped bringing trouble to our shores etc ...