Singapore and Hong Kong nationals set to use Thai electronic passport gates at Suvarnabhumi

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Singapore and Hong Kong nationals set to use Thai electronic passport gates at Suvarnabhumi

 

Picture: Daily News

 

BANGKOK: -- The chief of Suvarnabhumi has said that Singaporean and Hong Kong nationals will soon be allowed to use the automated gates reserved for Thai travelers at the airport.

 

Sirot Duangrat, the airport authority director, said that the measure should speed up immigration for everybody by reducing lines, reported Daily News.

 

Some 20-25% of Thais leave the country via Suvarnabhumi and of these 60% use the electronic gates, he said.

 

Of all travelers those from Singapore and Hong Kong make up ten per cent of visitors to Thailand, he claimed.

 

Now immigration have said that they want to trial nationals from Singapore and Hong Kong to use the same gates. The two nations will also allow Thais to use their own electronic gates.

 

Sirot said that last year 55.9 million passengers passed through Suvarnabhumi and at number is expected to be 60 million this year.

 

Daily usage that was 190,000 on average last year is expected to be 195,000 this year.

 

Source: Daily News

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai Visa News 2017-05-30

[Chou Anou]

Great idea.  They should explore this with other countries (providing those countries reciprocate with benefits to Thais entering their own countries, of course).  Unfortunately, it will never happen with my country (US)...we treat the rest of the world like <deleted> when it comes to entering our borders, especially under current management, so I don't expect that anyone would (or should) be kind to us in that regard... 

[ezzra]

1 hour ago, Chou Anou said:

 Unfortunately, it will never happen with my country (US)...we treat the rest of the world like <deleted> when it comes to entering our borders

 

And rightly so, if there's a country in the world that has too many crappy,

illegals undesirables persons in their midst that would be the USa

and god knows they don't need anymore Thai over stayers.....

[shady86]

They should allow work permit holders, long term pass holders to use the electronic gate. I was an employment pass holder at Singapore and was allowed to use the gate which make travel smooth.

I was stuck at DMK last week for 1 hour immigration queue due to half the counters opened and tons of China tourist coming at the same time!

[khunano]

Does this tiny, cute machine also stamp passports??? Just wondering....

[yellowboat]

It will save time.  Nothing more fun than watching Thai immigration read each page of your passport carefully hoping to find something that is not there.  Only Thai immigration does this.

[Disinto]

How about allowing expats paying their taxes here to also use the bloody machines? Since there doesn't seem to be any specific technical shortcoming to allow doing so. So sick of being stuck with bunches of Chinese or Russian twice a week. All other Asian countries I've worked in (Singapore, Taiwan) allowed expats to use e-gates. 

[Jane Dough]

1 hour ago, Disinto said:

How about allowing expats paying their taxes here to also use the bloody machines? Since there doesn't seem to be any specific technical shortcoming to allow doing so. So sick of being stuck with bunches of Chinese or Russian twice a week. All other Asian countries I've worked in (Singapore, Taiwan) allowed expats to use e-gates. 

Why dont you just go through the Thai gates? Any Thai speaker can blag their way through that one is asked. 

[Arkady]

In principle a good idea but the queues at the automatic gates can now be quite bad due the completely unnecessary requirement to input the flight number which is confusing to all but the most frequent travellers.  Also the system for finger print recognition is slow and below par.  My finger prints have been not recognised more than half a dozen times, forcing me to line up in the queue for a physical IO.  My iPhone recognises my fingerprints without difficulty several times a day.  

 

I think they need throw out the xisting system and buy a decent one, as well as streamline process to avoid people having to input flight numbers into the machine before they open it up to other nationalities.  Otherwise queues will become unbearable.     

[Argus Tuft]

8 hours ago, khunano said:

Does this tiny, cute machine also stamp passports??? Just wondering....

I would be interested to know the answer to this also.

[shady86]

We will need to wait till Thailand 10.0 to use automatic gate for long term visa holders

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

[Arkady]

No, the automatic gates don't stamp passports.  They only scan them, so there is no longer any paper trail in the passports.

 

Permanent residents can get registered to use the electronic gates. I am not sure if foreigners with work permits and NON-Imm B visas can register yet but I am sure it won't be a long way off, if not yet available.  They seem to want to expand the use of them.  Not surprising given the difficulty of recruiting immigration officers to work at the airports.  There is no money to be made there, due to the poor pay and conditions, and they have to do shifts, work continuously and attempt to smile sometimes.  It's much more fun to work normal civil service hours slacking about in an office and lording it over the occasional foreigner that comes in.   

[Moonmoon]

So how does this work? I am Singaporean. 

I am on extension based on Marriage visa.

If I leave and re-enter on re-entry permit, do i need stamps or not? 

[Arkady]

On 6/2/2017 at 1:02 PM, Moonmoon said:

So how does this work? I am Singaporean. 

I am on extension based on Marriage visa.

If I leave and re-enter on re-entry permit, do i need stamps or not? 

 

If you enter and leave through the electronic gates, your passport will not be stamped. It will be just be scanned in the same way as the immigration officer scans it when you enter through the manual gate.

 

This seems to be a plan to trial a system to allow all Singaporean and HK passport holders to use the gates on a reciprocal basis which would allow all Thai passport holders to use the electronic gates in Singapore and HK.  My observation, as a Thai passport holder, is that the technology of the Suvarnabhumi and Don Meuang electronic gates and the way Thai Immigration use them are still well below the level needed to process only Thai passports.  So any trial letting foreign tourists share them is likely to be a grotesque failure.

 

Actually foreigners with Thai permanent residence can already use the electronic gates by registering in advance at Suvarnabhumi or Don Meuang now, as far as I know.  I think it may also be possible for foreigners on NON-IMM B visas and work permits to register now too.  You should call Immigration and ask if you are already eligible, if you are interested.    

[Moonmoon]

21 minutes ago, Arkady said:

 

 

 

Actually foreigners with Thai permanent residence can already use the electronic gates by registering in advance at Suvarnabhumi or Don Meuang now, as far as I know.  I think it may also be possible for foreigners on NON-IMM B visas and work permits to register now too.  You should call Immigration and ask if you are already eligible, if you are interested.    

I will. Thank you for the info!

[gk10002000]

so 10 % of the travelers leaving are from Singapore or Hong kong.  I don't see that making a big dent, but I guess they have to start somewhere.  I wonder if this will increase the number of chinese that depart and return to Hong Kong versus other chinese airports?

[terry18]

How about Singapore PR? can they use?

[Arkady]

On 6/19/2017 at 6:32 AM, gk10002000 said:

so 10 % of the travelers leaving are from Singapore or Hong kong.  I don't see that making a big dent, but I guess they have to start somewhere.  I wonder if this will increase the number of chinese that depart and return to Hong Kong versus other chinese airports?

 

No, because they are talking about Hong Kong SAR passport holders, rather than travellers arriving from HK.  

[Arkady]

Follow-up article today clarifies that Singapore and HK passport holders will have to register in Thailand to use the service, so this is clearly aimed only at frequent visitors.  I wonder if they will ask for a Thai guarantor to allow them register, as they do with foreign PR holders, assuming they still do that.  That would flumux Singaporean and HK people trying to register.  There has been no explanation of what the purpose of a guarantor is.  

 

The main class of frequent visitors who would benefit from this would be foreigners without PR  working legally in the Kingdom.  Thailand is way behind the curve in this as many countries, including including Japan, Singapore and Malaysia have e-gates for foreigners with work permits.  Also as mentioned earlier, the system is rather low quality, having more problems in recognising a lot of people's finger print scans than the average iPhone, and it is ridiculous that they have to have women standing by the gates processing people through them. They should buy more efficient technology without commission payments that is easier to use without the need for staff which defeats the purpose, like the automated car park ticket dispensers in Thailand that always have an employer handing the ticket to drivers.