Dubai Airport plans to do away with waiting in security lines and e-gates. Instead it will have travellers walk through a virtual fish tank which scans their faces.

According to a report in The National, the tunnel will display images of an aquarium and will be equipped with about 80 cameras.

“The fish is a sort of entertainment and something new for the traveller but, at the end of the day, it attracts the vision of the travellers to different corners in the tunnel for the cameras to capture his/her face print,” Major Gen Obaid Al Hameeri, deputy director general of Dubai residency and foreign affairs, told The National.

The images displayed could be changed to, say, the desert, or even to display adverts. After passing through the tunnel, travellers will receive a green light for go or a red light if they need to wait for airport personnel.

Virtual borders

The first ‘virtual border’ is planned for Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport next summer. After the pilot, there are plans to potentially roll the tunnels out to other terminals to 2020.

Over 124 million passengers are expected to pass through Dubai airports by 2020, according to General Civil Aviation figures.

“We had to come up with more ways to co-op with the increase. Right now, we have 80 million,” the Maj Gen is quoted as saying.