This should severely cut down time spent queueing – hooray!

Anyone who’s been caught in a passport control queue at the airport knows that it’s not a lot of fun. Depending on how busy it is, you could spend upwards of an hour waiting to get through to baggage claim, putting a damper on an otherwise streamlined experience through Dubai Airport.

Thankfully, it looks like that might soon all be in the past. A new passenger pre-approval system is set to roll out across all airports in the emirate that should drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to get your passport stamped.

How quickly are we talking? Well, if this report from Gulf News is to believed, the whole process should take a speedy 10 seconds, cutting down from the current three minutes it takes for a passport control officer to properly vet you when you walk up to the counter – that’s very impressive indeed.

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Developed by the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA), the new system supposedly works by collecting the necessary data on a passenger from the moment they purchase a plane ticket. Checks are then carried out 48 hours before arrival or departure and clearance is issued so that the passport control officer needs to only verify that everything is on the up-and-up, stamp your passport and wave you through.

Presently, only Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport has fully implemented the system, with the remaining two terminals and Al Maktoum International Airport expected to be compliant by the end of 2018.

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