BA to fingerprint domestic passengers

[Roland Perry]

In article <D67A545B-E59A-4EE4-8428-210FC482CF8D@batten.eu.org>, Ian 
Batten <igb@batten.eu.org> writes
>> 2) What's special at T5 - domestic and international passengers mingle
>>    freely in the shops and bars at East Midlands Airport
>
>There's probably not a lot of people transferring through EMA;

They do not appear to have a formal transfer process. You have to clear 
immigration then go through normal security again.

> LHR T5  will have a massive number of transfer passengers, especially 
>those  transferring from long haul to UK internal flights.  The issue, 
>I  think, it segregation of arriving passengers --- who will want to, 
>and  who the airport will want to, use the restaurants and such if they 
>are  transferring --- from internal departures.

So they are segregating them by taking fingerprints, rather than 
physically. As I said earlier, this will require them to identify 
domestic (as opposed to international) transit passengers somewhere 
between the gate and the lounge.

>At BHX they photograph internal passengers as they go airside, and then 
>check those photographs as you go into the gate lounge. Fingerprints 
>have the advantage you can automate the process, I suppose.

That must be T1, I haven't seen anything like that at T2.

>I thought about it, and I think the attack they're worried about is 
>this:
>
>My Three Bad Friends, who don't want to go through UK passport control, 
>board a plane from overseas to BHX.  I buy four tickets from BHX to an 
>arbitrary internal airport, ideally one which has only a small number 
>of non-internal flights (so there are few Customs and Passport people 
>around).   I check in with three of my arbitrary people.

If that's a physical check-in someone will be looking to make sure their 
names match the tickets.

>My three arbitrary companions leave the airport, but I go  airside with 
>four boarding passes.

This is the weak point. There is already a barcode scan of online-issued 
boarding passes at this stage. It could easily be extended to all 
boarding passes. One person won't get to have four boarding passes 
scanned so the four friends won't show up at this "secondary checkin" 
and I'd hope the airline would then bump them at the gate.

>Once airside I meet my Three Bad  Friends, give them their boarding 
>passes and head for the gate to  catch the plane to Aberdeen.    The 
>person that takes the tickets  airside can't just exit because although 
>BHX doesn't do a good job of  segregating international arrivals from 
>internal departures they _do_  do a good job of segregating internal 
>arrivals.

Why can't he just claim to have changed his mind (about travelling) at 
the last minute? Or are you a prisoner of the airline at this point? Or 
does he not want to draw attention to himself?

Hold on a second, you aren't on the plane yet.

At the gate, someone checks all four IDs against the names on the 
tickets. (But if you checked in originally online or at kiosk, that's 
OK).

>At ABZ we are four domestic arrivals on a domestic flight, so we can 
>head off into the fleshpots unmolested (*).  Job done.  We now return 
>to Birmingham, if that was our original destination, by train or car. 
>Or we can fly: checking in with fake ID isn't a big deal on a domestic 
>flight, or as passports aren't checked against the UKPA database we 
>could in fact use the passports that would have been toxic on our 
>original arrival in the UK.  A fake EU driving license --- do _you_ 
>know what a Greek driving license should look like? --- would be 
>perfectly good, though.

Do airlines accept foreign DLs as well as foreign ID cards?
-- 
Roland Perry