Passport control, New Technology

If you've ever come off a long flight and had to stand tired and crumpled in a queue for passport control, you'll appreciate the logic behind Smartgate, the latest attempt at airport automation.

It's a system that lets arriving passengers with biometric-enabled passports (ePassports) check themselves through immigration and customs at computer kiosks. It has been trialled at Brisbane airport and will get a test run at Wellington (NZ) airport in the coming months.

It works like this: when you get off the plane instead of joining a queue at passport control you go to an ePassport terminal and swipe your passport through it.

The computer uploads a digital photo of your face, asks you the types of standard questions immigration and customs officers are likely to and prints a ticket for you. As you progress through the airport you come to another kiosk where you enter your ticket.

Three cameras simultaneously scan your face and, using facial-recognition software that measures the structure of your facial features and the space between them, decides whether you are the person the computer thinks you are. If there's a match, you're on your way.

There were a few hiccups last year in getting the technology working properly, mainly due to integrating the ePassport system with different kiosks and readers around airports.

Probably, but the system will take years to implement on a global system - New Zealand, for its part, wants the system in place for trans-Tasman travel by the 2011 Rugby World Cup. I look forward to checking out the system at Wellington Airport - once I get an ePassport.

There are also some changes in the air when it comes to in-flight communications. Qantas, by the end of the year, will let passengers on certain Australian domestic routes send and receive SMS messages and emails. In the states however, there's a big push underway to rekindle the market for broadband in the air, with Aircell using its technology on American Airlines and Virgin America flights to offer Wi-Fi access to passengers priced from US$10 for a trip lasting up to three hours.

I like the idea of having email and web-access in the air ever since i first used the in seat entertainment system many years ago. Voice calls from the air are of less interest to me. I'd rather not sit there listening to someone else's mid-air phone call and I'm sure the feeling would be mutual with many passengers.