BCD Travel Sales Director, Stephen Finlay, got through Customs within 30 seconds at Sydney International Airport thanks to the newly introduced SmartGate.
Returning to Australia from a corporate travel trip to Thailand, Stephen used his updated international ePassport with micro-chip to clear Customs in record time.
“It was so easy – I put my passport into the reader, used the touch screen to answer a couple of questions, grabbed my SmartGate ticket and used that in the facial recognition machine. I was out of there in 30 seconds,” he said.
Mr Finlay said he had previously waited up to half an hour to clear Customs before the SmartGate technology was introduced this year.
“In corporate travel Australia, anything that saves business travellers time is going to be gratefully received,” he said.
“I went through at 8.30am when there are lots of corporate travellers coming in on international flights, yet there were no lines for SmartGate.”
Business travellers with passports issued prior to October 2005 need to upgrade to international ePassports, which contain micro-chips and display the gold international ePassport symbol, in order to use SmartGate.