SITA reveals biometric boarding solution at Passenger Terminal EXPO

At the Passenger Terminal EXPO today, SITA revealed Smart Path, a solution that lets passengers move through an airport and board aircraft using biometrics to verify their identity instead of having to present a boarding pass, a passport or travel documents.

The SITA Smart Path solution has passenger’s biometric details captured with a facial scan at the first touch point in the airport experience. The record is checked against the passenger’s travel documents, most often their passport, and a secure single token is created. At each subsequent step of the journey, such as check-in, aircraft boarding or border control, passengers gain access with a facial scan and do not have to show passports or a boarding pass.

In a statement, SITA says that its solution can be easily integrated into existing airport infrastructure and airline systems, including standard common-use, self-service equipment already in use across the industry such as check-in kiosks, bag drop units, gates for secure access, boarding and automated border control, which would make rapid deployment easy and cost-effective.

Smart Path also integrates with government systems and databases, allowing integrated immigration and border checks.

“SITA has a strong record of introducing new self-service solutions across the entire passenger journey for both airlines and airports,” said Matthys Serfontein, Vice President, Airport Solutions.

“But we also provide sophisticated border management systems to governments. Everyday hundreds of airlines use SITA technology to connect with Government identity management and risk assessment systems in countries around the world.

“We have built on this unique expertise to create SITA Smart Path – a single, secure, self-service process using existing common-use infrastructure which works seamlessly with multiple airline and government systems. Smart Path simplifies secure, passenger processing for everyone – airlines, airports and border authorities.”

SITA expects that by 2020 passengers using biometrics will be the norm at airports across the world.

“The key to single token travel is gathering and verifying data as early in the process as possible in order to establish a robust token,” added Serfontein. “This includes both biometric and biographic information. And then if necessary to update it with more detailed information from airline, airport or government systems at various steps in the journey. That is exactly how we have designed SITA Smart Path.”

SITA provides border management solutions to more than 30 governments and has in excess of 1,000 self-boarding lanes across the globe which can be used to introduce this new biometric system.

Article Topics

access control  |  airports  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  facial recognition  |  identity verification  |  immigration control  |  SITA