Muscat: Smart gates, faster travel counters are expected to ease summer travel. Long lines at immigration and check-in counters are becoming a thing of the past with the introduction of smart gates at Muscat and other regional airports such as Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
According to airport officials, passengers can pass through the smart gates and clear immigration formalities within minutes by just scanning passports. “With the smart gates now operational, residents and expatriates can clear immigration by scanning their passports and registering their digital ID,” an official of Oman Airports told the Observer.
Sources in the Royal Oman Police (ROP) said, “Residents and citizens will be able to clear the immigration process by using the mobile (QR scan) after creating a digital ID on an ROP application. Inbound passengers coming to the country for the first time may use manual immigration counters at airports very soon.” Some passengers at Muscat Airport encounter problems at smart gates, which force them to clear formalities at the conventional counters by standing in queues The smart gates have been successfully implemented in Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports, where travellers have to just scan their faces and their passports to get in and out of the airports.
Besides smart gates, airports in the region are also moving towards self-check-in, self-bag drop, e-registration, e-border gate, and self-boarding services.
These innovations are part of the One ID initiative, which aims to streamline passenger journeys with advance sharing of information and a contactless process at the airport based on biometric-enabled identification.
By obtaining all necessary authorisations and demonstrating admissibility to travel prior to departure, passengers will be ‘Ready to Fly’ before they arrive at the airport, according to IATA.
The travel experience can be further enhanced through digital identity technology, allowing passengers to move through airport touchpoints swiftly without showing physical documents. "The steps to be followed are creating a digital identity and using face identification at all checkpoints in the airport, without the need to display passports at any point in time.
The main advantages are that travelers digitally demonstrate to the airline that they meet all the travel requirements (visa) to the destination country before reaching the airport
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