Fast track through immigration for a price

Queues at immigration desks in airports can be a nightmare and are often time consuming. Travellers are now being offered the chance to skip the queues for a fee of £50 and passengers will be able to make use of the fast track system at Heathrow as of next year. The idea will see passengers use a fast gate that is already in place at Luton and Liverpool airports and is proving itself to be a time saving alternative. Charges are continuously being put up at airports around the country in a bid to save the aviation industry from further suffering during the continuing economic downturn.

Only last week British Airways announced that they would be charging passengers who wanted to reserve their seats in a bid to make extra money. The new gates will be far quicker than the normal immigration system and it will work by identifying passengers through the biometric passports that contain chips that measure the distance between a passenger’s nose, eyes, mouth and ears to determine who they are.

Fewer than 20 million Britons actually own the new passport even though they were introduced back in March 2006. Passengers carrying these passports will be able to use the new system for free and so will EU passengers who travel with a biometric passport. As of last week, a Japanese airline has asked its passengers to use the toilet before boarding their flights as the company try to reduce their carbon emissions. All Nippon Airways (ANA) explain the strange decision by claiming that passengers who empty their bladders before entering the plane will be lighter loads and therefore the aircraft will be lighter and the emissions less.