Technology is finally changing the way we travel

If you've ever come off a long flight and had to stand tired and crumpled in a queue for passport control, you'll appreciate the logic behind Smartgate, the latest attempt at airport automation.
It's a system that lets arriving passengers with biometric-enabled passports (ePassports) check themselves through immigration and customs at computer kiosks. It has been trialled at Brisbane airport and will get a test run at Wellington airport in the coming months.
Here's how the system works: when you get off the plane instead of joining the snaking queue at passport control you instead race for an ePassport terminal and swipe your passport through it.
The computer uploads a digital photo of your face, asks you the types of standard questions immigration and customs officers are likely to and prints a ticket for you. As you progress through the airport you come to another kiosk where you enter your ticket.
Three cameras simultaneously scan your face and, using facial-recognition software that measures the structure of your facial features and the space between them, decides whether you are the person the computer thinks you are. If there's a match, you're on your way. If not, you have a problem.
There were a few hiccups last year in getting the technology working properly, mainly due to integrating the ePassport system with different kiosks and readers around airports.
But it is likely to increasingly be the process you have the option of going through initially as a trans-Tasman passenger, then hopefully further afield. I say hopefully, because I'm all in favour of anything that speeds up the arrival process at the big airports around the world. Tokyo, Dubai, London Heathrow and Los Angeles have what are in my experience the longest airport arrival queues. Will tapping screens on computers be any faster than talking to humans?
Probably, but the system will take years to implement on a global system - New Zealand, for its part, wants the system in place for trans-Tasman travel by the 2011 Rugby World Cup. I look forward to checking out the system at Wellington Airport - once I get an ePassport.
Ultimately, the same process will be in place for international airport departures because border control authorities want to make sure the people leaving the country are the correct passport holders. Currently humans do all that vetting.
Changes are also afoot in the air when it comes to in-flight communications. Qantas, by the end of the year, will let passengers on certain Australian domestic routes send and receive SMS messages and emails.
No pricing has been revealed, but stopping short of offering voice calling from the air shows the airline is wary of the potential backlash from passengers annoyed at having to sit next to people talking on their mobile phones at 30,000 feet. Emirates is going further, using AeroMobile technology to allow calls to be made on certain flights.
The first calls from the air were made a few days ago by passengers using the service on a Dubai-Casablanca Emirates flight.
Air New Zealand doesn't appear to be even trialling the technology yet. In the states however, there's a big push underway to rekindle the market for broadband in the air, with Aircell using its technology on American Airlines and Virgin America flights to offer Wi-Fi access to passengers priced from US$10 for a trip lasting up to three hours.
The technology is less relevant to us here in New Zealand, as such services are more useful for long haul trips. Due to the vast tracts of ocean we need to cross to get anywhere, a satellite-based broadband system is required. That's more expensive to offer than the ground-based antenna system Aircell operates on using radio frequencies it has secured.
I like the idea of having email and web-access in the air ever since I used the in-seat entertainment system on an Emirates flight to send email. Still, the convenience of it came at a high premium. Voice calls from the air are of less interest to me. I'd rather not sit there listening to someone else's mid-air phone call and I'm sure the feeling would be mutual with my fellow passengers.