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After 2 years of not flying, I recently flew from Alicante to Luton and back. It all went very smoothly, and the machines read my passport successfully (the first time ever for me!). And I used QR codes for both flights - again no problems.

I noticed they don't seem to check you when you actually step onto the plane any more.

I preferred the Easyjet flight as they still had a magazine to pass the half-hour—nothing on Ryanair.

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e-gates have been used for Brits arriving to Spain and Portugal but they still had to go through to a second area for a passport stamp... some reports seemed to suggest the second area and stamp wouldn't be necessary. If the British press understood right (if).

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If all goes to plan then stamping will become a thing of the past (for those who have the EES and ETIAS) BUT for us the scanners will throw up an error as they wont find either electronically attached to our passports.
And I dont think the TIE can be scanned. (could be wrong, though)
Thats the bit I am waiting for.

We returned from Gatwick to Alicante on Saturday night (23:30) and half of the scanners were down and there was only one rather bored and annoyed border guard stamping away.
He actually smiled when I showed the TIE and just waved me on, didnt even bother to look at it..

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They only check as you are boarding at the gate, not once you're actually stepping onto the plane.

Easyjet recently cancelled my flight as they had a tyre issue that grounded the plane overnight. They eventually put us on a different flight with a bus then taking pax to their original destination, so we arrived at 3am instead of 8pm. Filed for compensation, gladly they didn't try to give me the run-around but acknowledged the claim and paid out shortly afterwards. Nice, big amount too as there were 4 of us. :)

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Let's hope thats the case ! ..... and everyone will go through a true e-gate

I travel frequently in and out of the UAE, the throughput of passengers is mind-blowing and rarely have any wait entering or leaving, Abu Dhabi has taken it one step further with a virtually paperless system (including no passport)


Aside of the paperless aspect, their immigration system knows instantly who should and shouldn't be in the country, something the UK or EU will never achieve :)

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Re UK nationals using EU e-gates, this is point 16 in the EU-UK common understanding agreement which you can download:

16. The United Kingdom and the European Commission will continue their exchanges on smooth
border management for the benefit of their citizens, including the potential use of eGates
where appropriate. They note that European Union citizens can use eGates in the United
Kingdom and that there will be no legal barriers to eGate use for British Nationals traveling to
and from European Union Member States after the introduction of the European Union
Entry/Exit System.

So it's a definite step in the right direction from UK nationals who are non-EU residents but you will have to wait until EES is online and I would assume you will have to go to the EES (and eventually ETIAS) scanners first which have already been installed just before the passport control booths and then on to the EU e-gates after that.

Let's hope today's agreement is a serious move closer to the EU.

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So really the EU is confirming that ETIAS will work how it's supposed to work, when it is introduced.

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ETIAS is supposed to store historical data which currently isn't the case, right?

Because at present the Schengen system knows exactly who's inside and how/when they entered, but it doesn't store historical travel data so it doesn't track the overall limit of days allowed.

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As I suspected, this "deal" gives UK citizens nothing that wouldn't have happened anyway once EES goes live.

Britons will not be able to use e-gates in EU until October at earliest | Brexit | The Guardian

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Im certainly not holding my breath for October 😁

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Yep, once the EES is fully live everyone will be able to use the egates.
Only us poor immigrants who have UK passports (but not NLV holders) will still have to go to the desks. (unless there is some unicorn magic that will put us on the system)
The EES in the Uk already works as my son in law visited the with my daughter a month ago and he went through the same gate as everyone else. Didint get his passport stamped (he was upset as it was the first time a member of his family has been back to the Uk for a couple of hundred years).

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ETIAS has supposed to be going online for a while now. It’s about 5 years late as it is

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From what I have read, it looks like non-EU nationals will be channelled off to the EES/ETIAS scanners immediately on arrival and before passport control. They will have to register initially which will take time but after that the EES procedure will be faster and it will just be a case of checking details and making sure they are keeping to the 90 day travel rules for third country nationals.

The key point here which really should have been made much clearer is that even after the initial EES registration process, UK nationals will always be separated off to the EES scanners before passport control on both entry and exit every time they visit a Schengen state. They can then go to the EU e-gates instead of queuing for passport stamping but it's not a case of simply going back to how things were pre-Brexit, they will always have to go through the extra EES/ETIAS process and there will probably always be long queues at busy times.

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I’ve never experienced long Que times in Spanish airports. Before and after Brexit

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Will be interesting to see how this gets rolled out in practice and if it means passengers passing through 2 sets of e-gates that will be mighty inefficient, even the UK have managed to roll their systems into a single e-gate (as have most (not all) other countries that operate e-visas / e-gates).