India’s Digi Yatra biometric flight boarding set to launch

Air travel passengers in India are about to be able to board flights using facial recognition instead of physical documents as the Digi Yatra initiative is ready to go live at the end of February in select airports, according to The Hindu Business Online.

SITA is in talks to provide its Smart Path biometric technology for Digi Yatra to several airlines and airports in India, the Business Online reports. Smart Path integrates with government systems and databases for passenger authentication, making it appropriate for linking Digi Yatra to Aadhaar, and both Orlando and Miami airports have plans to extend Smart Path to other airlines in the near future, according to SITA’s Vice President for the Indian Subcontinent, Eastern and Southern Africa, Maneesh Jaikrishna.

“Leveraging India’s national Aadhaar biometric identity system with our proven common-use and Smart Path technology, SITA will be able to deliver a seamless biometric experience across all airlines and airports,” Jaikrishna says.

Digi Yatra, which was previously expected to launch in April of this year, will be available at Bengaluru ad Hyderabad airports, while the government-run Varanasi, Pune, Kolkata and Vijayawada airports have previously been reported to be among those participating in the initial roll-out.

The Airports Authority of India recently announced plans to deploy biometric kiosks to busy areas to make Digi Yatra enrollment and identity verification convenient for travelers.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  Digi Yatra  |  facial recognition  |  India  |  passenger processing