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Airline passengers travelling to and from Heathrow and Manchester from Bahrain with new UK and EU biometric passports may soon be screened using automated facial recognition technology rather than identity checks by passport officers.
From this summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record held on the computer chip in their biometric passports in an attempt to improve security and help ease congestion.
Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job of screening passports and preventing identity fraud than humans. The first pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.
But there are concerns that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. In order to ensure that no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through the gates, the technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives" - innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.
Those rejected may be redirected into passport queues staffed by control officers, or officers may be authorised to override automatic gates following additional checks.
The first trials are set to be staged during the summer holiday rush, but the authorities have not yet decided how many airports will take part in the first phase of the programme. If successful, it will be extended to all UK airports.
The automated passport clearance gates will introduce the new security technology to the UK mass market for the first time and may transform the public's experience of airports.
Existing biometric, fast-track travel schemes - iris and miSense - are already operating at several UK airports. However, they have been aimed at business travellers who are enrolled in advance.
Plans for the summer trials emerged at a conference in London this week which brought together the international biometrics industry, senior civil servants involved in border control, and police technology experts.
Gary Murphy, the head of operational design and development for the UK Borders Agency, explained: "We are planning a trial of facial recognition gates to see if they deliver our requirements. We think a machine can do a better job (than manned passport inspections).
"What will the public reaction be? Will they use it? We need to test and see how people react and how they deal with rejection. We hope to get the trial up and running by the summer."
Some conference participants feared that passengers would only be fast-tracked forward to the next queue or bottleneck in the UK's overcrowded airport network.
So far around 10 million new UK biometric passports, containing a computer chip holding the carrier's facial details, have been issued since they were introduced in 2006.
British Home Office Minister Liam Byrne said: "Britain's border security is now among the toughest in the world and tougher checks do take time, but we don't want long waits. So the UK Borders Agency will soon be testing new automatic gates for British and European Economic Area (EEA) citizens. We will test them this year and if they work put them at all key ports (and airports)."
The EEA includes all EU states as well as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland.
