Finnish airport operator concludes facial recognition pilot

Finnish airport operator, Finavia, and Finnair recently concluded its three-week pilot of facial recognition technology.

The system used in the test was provided by Futurice, and built using widely available hardware and software as well as cloud-based services.

One thousand frequent flyers were invited to take part in the project which was conducted in the Finnair normal priority passenger check-in. Participants used an app to send their face profiles to the test software platform and a designated check-in desk that contained the facial recognition technology.

According to a report in Business Insider Nordic, Heikki Koski, vice president of Helsinki Airport for Finavia commented that “customers involved in this latest test were delighted with their experience” which “bodes well for larger-scale utilisation in the future”.

The goal is to apply facial recognition technology on a much larger scale.

“We want to make air travel flow even smoother and be involved in further developing the customer experience,” explained Koski. “Facial recognition is part of the larger megatrend of biometric identification, and it will enable ‘hands-in-your-pockets-travelling’, where you no longer need any travel documents. When all travel-related information is digitized, it takes less time and is easier to get through the checkpoints at the airport.”

Article Topics

airport biometrics  |  biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  Finland