Digitally eased travels

It was a refreshing arrival experience at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Passenger Terminal 3. From the usual hour or so of being processed before a traveler gets out of the NAIA-3, it now takes about 30 minutes. That is, if a traveler is compliant with Immigration and Customs rules and regulations and has their official required documents. Or, it might be related to lower volume of arriving passengers at that time?

We arrived at 4 o’clock in the afternoon from Stockholm, Sweden. Our flight back to Manila was a bit delayed. The pilot informed us that our plane was told by the NAIA tower to hold the descent and maintain the flight pattern for ten minutes. Other than that, we were pleasantly surprised by the speedy manner we got out of the NAIA.

Actually, methinks half of the credit should go to the government’s digitalization program. In particular, to eGovPH.

Through the e-GovPH, Filipinos can do online the e-travel registration for both Immigration and Customs declaration even 72 hours before departure and arrival.

With just a mobile phone in hand, one can access already not just the e-travel but also the websites of national government agencies, local government units and even tourism sites. While I have yet to get my National ID card more than a year after I applied for it, it popped up in my eGovPH along with my senior citizen ID.

The problem or challenge in digital transactions, however, still remains. It largely depends on the strength of the signal of one’s WiFi connection. And at times, human error is still another source of frustration when one is digitally challenged.

When we arrived last Monday, we were so happy to see no lines at the Immigration area. What greeted us were rows of e-gates. I was so excited to try the e-gate. To play it safe, I asked my travel companion Isabel de Leon, my counterpart at the Manila Bulletin, to go ahead of me so I can watch how to go through the e-gate.

The e-gate turned out to be user-friendly. Screen-prompted, it gives a step-by-step guide to the process, a big help for digital idiots.

First, scan the plane’s boarding pass and then the passport. Once the two documents are read, the e-gate tells you to move forward and to step on the feet painted red on the floor. Place the right thumb on the biometric machine. And the last step is to look up at the camera. Once done, voila! the gate opens. So, it’s easy-peasy.

The danger lies, as stated earlier, in both human error and digital glitch, or worse if the machine conks out.

From Immigration, the wait at the NAIA-3 started only at the conveyor for our luggage. It is not clear why it did not take so much time to unload the luggages.

But digitalized transactions at the airport are no guarantees of swift and trouble-free travel.

At the Geneva International Airport, travelers have the option for digital check-in or manual check-in. Bound for Stockolm, we used the digital check-in at Swiss Air and got our luggages tagged. As if by fate, my two luggages got stuck at the conveyor. So I had to redo my check-in manually. When we arrived at Stockholm Alenda International Airport, two of my three traveling companions found to their dismay that their respective digitally checked-in luggages were left behind in Geneva and only one of them got his luggages through.

Speaking about digital airports, we became “guinea pigs” or “laboratory rats” to a pilot-test of a new “Entry Exit System” in Sweden en route to our connecting flight to Dubai at the Stockholm Airport. It is called “Borders of the Future” in the 27 member-states of the European Union. Both Switzerland and Sweden are EU members.

At the Immigration area, non-EU passport holders were herded to two booths dedicated to the pilot-testing of the EU “Smart Borders.” The Swedish police are preparing for the introduction of the new entry-exit system which will affect border control among the EU states. The following information was provided to the non-EU travelers:

• Within the pilot the police will automatically take a live facial image at the border control;

• The pilot includes all third-country nationals, but participation is voluntary (supposedly, but all non-EU passport holders were all required to go through to the two booths);

• The purpose is to measure process times and see how the total time at the border control is affected;

• The recorded image will be deleted once you have passed through border control.

And at the end of the notice, it stated: “The pilot is in accordance with current data protection regulations and guidelines. Collected personal data will only be used to measure processing times and train new techniques.”

So we had to bear and grunt at the snail-pace processing that took us almost 30 minutes of standing and waiting for our turn.

Other than that pilot-testing, the rest of the airport services can be replicated in our NAIA, especially digital-wise. This will be the opportune time for such improvements and upgrades of airport services at the NAIA now that it is under new management. Called the New NAIA Infrastructure Corp. (NNIC), San Miguel Corp. headed by its chairman Ramon S. Ang, who is concurrently the NNIC president, is now in charge of the operations and maintenance of all four NAIA passenger terminals.

Among other things, the NNIC is committed to increase airport capacity from 35 million passengers annually to 62 million and expand air traffic movements per hour from 40 to 48.

Yesterday, the NNIC announced it has partnered with both PLDT/Smart and Converge as WiFi providers. NNIC promises arriving and departing passengers at NAIA can now enjoy faster and more reliable free WiFi. We look forward to these digitally-aided services for easier, swifter and safer travel as foremost priority at the NAIA.