Biometric flight boarding trialed by Air France-KLM at two U.S. airports

Air France-KLM is expanding its use of biometrics with trials at John F Kennedy (JFK) International Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston in collaboration with U.S. Customs and Border Protection as part of the agency’s Biometric Entry/Exit program.

Facial recognition boarding systems will be used for Air France flights from the two airports, serving a combined total of more than 2,200 daily passengers. The airlines will test the speed, reliability, and user-friendliness of the technology, with the ultimate goal of making the boarding process as quick and easy as possible, according to the announcement.

“We are excited to embrace an innovation that has the potential to make the travel experience less stressful and more secure for our passengers,” says Stephane Ormand, vice president and general manager, Air France KLM USA. “Our aim is to implement biometric boarding at 93 percent of all US airports by the year’s end, and 100 percent by 2020.”

Vision-Box recently announced the rollout of biometric boarding at JFK’s Terminal One, and CBP plans to extend Biometric Exit to nearly all international departures within four years.

Passengers departing from Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas Fort-Worth, Detroit, Dulles, San Francisco, and Seattle on Air France and KLM can already use biometric boarding systems, and other gateways are in various stages of testing.

The airlines also recently expanded their service in the U.S. with direct flights to Paris and Amsterdam from three U.S. cities. The rapid growth in air traffic volume is one of the main motivating factors behind biometric deployments in the aviation industry, as industry stakeholders recently told Biometric Update.

Article Topics

airport biometrics  |  biometric exit  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  facial recognition  |  passenger processing  |  travel and tourism