UAE: Tourists to soon skip queues at airports, use smart gates with new immigration app

Tourists coming to UAE will no longer have to stand in queues for biometrics and Iris scans and instead they can walk through smart gates within seconds and clear immigration.

The Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs and Port Security (ICP) has introduced a new app – which was rolled out at the Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi around two weeks ago – at the Gitex Global exhibition at the Dubai World Trade Centre.

“UAE Pass Track is a mobile app which allows tourists coming to the UAE to register before they arrive in the country. Once they are registered, they can use smart gates at Zayed International Airport and don’t have to wait for their turn in queues. Currently, most of the passengers at Zayed Airport are using it. In the next few months, we plan to roll this out at airports in Dubai and Sharjah,” an official at the ICP stand at Gitex Global told in an interview.

UAE residents who are currently registered with the ICP and the General Director of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) are using this facility which allows them to use smart gates and clear immigration when departing or arriving at airports.

This new facility will save a lot of time and hassle for millions of tourists who will visit the UAE in the future. Abu Dhabi Airport received 13.9 million visitors in the first half of 2024.

Going forward, this initiative will benefit millions of tourists who use Dubai and Sharjah airports every month. Dubai International received 44.9 million passengers during the January-June 2024 period including millions of tourists from across the globe.

“Since visitors are coming to the UAE for the first time, they need to register for Iris and biometrics data. Now, they can use the smart gate and complete the process in a few seconds. They need to enter their flight number and passport details. The system will fetch all the information from the passport,” said the spokesperson at the ICP pavilion.

Currently, the app is available for both Android and Apple platforms.

“Since it has been just rolled out, the response has been good. We are presenting it here at Gitex Global and next month we will have an even better response,” he said.