I had an interesting experience with Smartgate when I came through MEL from HKG last month. I was with
Mrs. serfty, mini serfty and my niece. I had my Smartgate trial endorsed PP and the girls with spanking new microchipped ePassports.
I had done some research after
Mal's post; I was wondering if we could all use Smartgate coming back from HKG. I firstly by asked this at the immigration counter while I was passing through as a
Domestic PAX and secondly by emailing the Smartgate Website (
[email protected]).
The first answer was very positive; a sweep of the hand pointing to the gates and an answer of "
No problem, bring them through".
With the Email I had a bit of a canned answer:
Code:
The goods news is there is now a Smartgate kiosk available for use by
Australian ePassport holders. It is called the ePassport kiosk and it is
located beside the trial version SmartGate. You do not need to enroll to use
the system - you are already eligible. Next time you arrive at either
Sydney or Melbourne international airports there will be a dedicated Customs
marshall who will show you how to use the updated kiosk.
After pressing for further detail I received the following:
Code:
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, 18 September 2006 11:21 AM
To: <serfy@email-address>
Subject: RE: Smartgate ePassport Usage
<Serfty>
There are two kiosks located side by side in Melbourne. One is the trial
version, which you can use with your current passport, and the other is the
epassport version, which your wife can use with her epassport.
Hope this helps.
Regards
SmartGate
So armed with this information off we went on our journey.
When arriving back in MEL we came in just after a Emirates A345 had arrived; more to the point we had been in rows 58 & 59 of a nearly full 744. Of course a couple of my party required a pit stop immediately on exiting the aircraft so there would be further delays ensuring nearly two aircraft loads would be in front of us.
Ten minutes later we got down to immigration, the hall was like the oft mentioned "Zoo"; crowded with 400 to 500 passengers queued up as well as 20 or more EK aircrew in their special lane on the left.
I ushered my family down between these queues to the Smartgate Kiosks. There appeared to be no "dedicated Customs marshall" to "show ... how to use the updated kiosk". So I showed Jenny how to stand on the spot and look at the camera nearest her eye level. It did not work, merely flashing some red lights at her, so we started to try with
mini serfty. As we were doing this an agent came over to see what was happening. After we showed the passports and explained she apologised that the SmartGate 1 kiosk was not active at that time and she would process them manually. So the girls went with her to a processing desk while I used the Smartgate trial kiosk. Looking back I noted the queue for Aircrew had got longer as the QF mob had arrived.
This whole process took about 2 minutes. We then proceeded down to the baggage carousel where our bags with the Yellow F tags were already circulating.
So all in all an interesting experience. I'm not sure why the Smartgate 1 kiosk was inactive but as the immigration agent was quite apologetic, I certainly felt we had a right to use it.