Airport biometrics launched for contactless boarding, bag drop, lounge access and border checks

Biometrics implementations by Idemia in Brazil, American Airlines at DFW, NEC in Japan and Romania’s Border Police are rolling out biometric eGates as contactless processes expand worldwide.

Santos Dumont Airport in Brazil has launched fully digital flight boarding with face biometrics from Idemia to make the process more efficient, agile and secure.

The implementation under the Embarque + Seguro is the first in the country to completely dispense with physical identity documents and boarding passes, though it is planned for eventual country-wide rollout.

“Passengers now have an end-to-end biometric boarding solution, following international standards of quality, reliability and security,” comments Idemia Business Development Director Rodrigo Costa. “IDEMIA’s technology, in partnership with MInfra and Serpro, combines the convenience, without contact, with the security of data validation in government respecting privacy and in accordance with the LGPD, providing more security for boarding and ensuring a hygienic process in the journey of passengers. Implementing public security and identification solutions is one of IDEMIA’s main missions, aiming to benefit Brazilian airports at this critical moment in the recovery of the airline industry.”

The system checks biometrics from passenger photos against a government database, with each check taking approximately two seconds, and avoids unnecessary contact with shared surfaces for reduced COVID-19 risk.

American expands biometric bag drop trial

American Airlines is putting more touchless technology in place for its passengers, with a trial of biometric touchless bag-drop service expanding across most Dallas Fort Worth terminals, and contactless services at some Admirals Club lounges, according to a company announcement.

Passengers of AA use the VeriFLY app before they fly to confirm they meet all travel requirements, as well as print bag tags and check in without touching a kiosk.

The tablet devices pictured for the bag drop process with face biometrics are provided by Thales.

AA plans a test of biometric boarding for domestic flights at DFW later this spring, and insights from the current trials will be used in the airline’s future work on touchless passenger experiences.

NEC Bio-IDiom in contactless tourism trial

NEC and Japan Airlines have partnered with Kagoshima Airport and the Kirishima City Tourism Association to deploy face biometrics that works with masked faces for contactless lounge entry.

NEC’s Bio-IDiom facial recognition powers the trial deployments, which also include “digital stamps” (according a Google translation) that can be collected at 5 tourist locations around the city as mementos. Travellers can self-enroll their biometrics through their smartphones.

Romania to pilot 6 biometric gates

Six automatic biometric border control gates have been deployed to Henri Coanda International Airport by the Romanian Border Police for a pilot project, Aviation Pros reports.

The automated border control (ABC) gates can be used by passengers from the EU, European Economic Area and Switzerland who hold biometric travel documents, to provide fast, convenient and secure processing. The number of gates in the deployment can be expanded from 6 to 24 with additional software licenses, without adding additional hardware.

The Lei 2.3 million (roughly US$560,000) project is three-quarters funded by the EU’s Internal Security Fund program.

Article Topics

airports  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  contactless  |  facial recognition  |  IDEMIA  |  NEC  |  passenger processing  |  travel and tourism