Passengers are passing through immigration at Dubai International Airport more quickly thanks to new technologies, as the airport gears up to have a capacity of 118 million passengers next year.
The clearance time and subsequent wait times at the airport have dropped by about 10% during the first quarter with the implementation of Emirates ID facility at e-gates and a new passenger tracking system, said Dubai Airports.
"Around 84% of transfer passengers were processed within five minutes, 68% of arrival passengers were processed within 15 minutes and 87% of departing passengers were processed within 10 minutes," said Dubai Airports in a statement.
The airport, which had a capacity of 90 million in 2016, recorded 83.6 million passengers last year and is expecting 89 million passengers in 2017.
Smart gates and the use of Emirates ID cards at the automated immigration gates has helped to push down the transaction times to an average of 10 to 15 seconds per passenger.
The service was introduced last year and has been used by 1.3 million UAE users, according to the airport. The service is available to all UAE residents holding an Emirates ID at the 120 Smart Gates across the airport.
Another new technology that involves a motion sensor system allows the airport to track queues in real time, helping faster clearance. The system comprises 530 sensors installed at passenger-processing areas in Terminal 1 and Terminal 3 at the airport. Implementation of the system at Terminal 2 is expected this year.
The sensors track data such as passenger wait times and queue lengths. A mobile application conveys the data to about 5,000 operational staff across Dubai Airports, airlines and control authorities working at the airport so that they can identify and clear bottlenecks.
"The automated system provides us with timelier and more accurate data more quickly than the manual system that was used previously," said Frank McCrorie, Dubai Airports’ senior vice president of operations.