According to the authorities, there is a risk that an international or transit passenger could board a domestic flight by somehow obtaining a boarding pass, since a passport is not required on domestic flights. Theoretically, this could lead to international or transit passengers entering the UK without passing through border control.
Such mixing occurs in two of the five terminals of London's Heathrow Airport, in another London airport, Gatwick, and also in Manchester.
The new project involves photographing and fingerprinting all departing passengers passing through security from the general airport area to the 'sterile' area, and then repeating the procedure when boarding the aircraft to compare the data.
Heathrow had already tried to introduce such fingerprinting for domestic passengers when the fifth terminal opened in spring, but that move was blocked by human rights activists. Now the authorities want to make such a procedure universal and extend it to international passengers as well. In addition, similar plans exist for seaports and railway stations on the line from London to the continent through the Channel Tunnel.
As Travel.ru reports, there is a version that the blame lies with the company FAA, which manages the largest British airports, and intentionally does not want to separate passenger flows so that all of them pass by its Duty Free shops at the airports and make purchases there.