‘New era in travel’: airports, airlines continue to be sweet spot for biometrics

A fascinating experiment in biometrics would be to find a privacy conscious person who would generally avoid facial recognition, put them in a four-hour customs line at the airport and ask if they’d like to save half the day by using the biometric access lane.

Long lineups are the worst at airports. Shuffling through flimsy guardrails, dragging luggage, counting the number of people ahead: it is among the more demoralizing experiences in access control. SITA’s newly released 2024 Passenger IT Insights report says 64 percent of passengers highlight shorter airport queues as the most important improvement to the travel process they’d like to see. Meanwhile, air travel is booming, with passenger numbers hitting 5.2 billion in 2023.

So, it should come as no surprise that air travel continues to be a maven for biometric technology that makes the airport less of a headache. While there are lingering data privacy concerns and an education gap around standards and regulations, more passengers are opting for the quicker biometric option. SITA says 67 percent of travelers now “rate their comfort levels with biometrics relatively highly.” Airports are paying attention, investing an estimated US$10.8 billion in IT in 2023.

In a release, David Lavorel, CEO of SITA, says the world is “on the cusp of a new era in travel, as unprecedented demand converges with technological innovations that have the power to revolutionize the journey. The appetite from passengers is clear: they’re eager to embrace the latest digital solutions to make their experience swifter and more streamlined than ever before.”

Lavorel says the industry needs to move towards greater usage of digital travel credentials (DTCs) and that “responsibility falls to the industry to make sure travelers are fully informed of the advanced data security and privacy-preserving potential of biometrics.”

The sales pitch is easily sweetened with other time-saving use cases, particularly “smart luggage solutions like baggage tracking on mobile devices and off-airport baggage collection and drop-off services.”

SITA, Idemia add baggage to partnership

On the baggage front, a release says SITA and Idemia Public Security are expanding their partnership to “tackle key challenges in baggage handling and airport operations.”

“The air transport industry is facing unprecedented challenges as passenger numbers continue to surge, with global traffic expected to double by 2040,” says Nicole Hogg, portfolio director of baggage at SITA Airports.

“Airports and airlines are struggling to keep pace with this growth, particularly when it comes to baggage handling. Delays, mishandling, and inefficiencies still pose significant operational bottlenecks, impacting both the passenger experience and airport resources.”

Hogg says that integrating computer vision into baggage processing will set “a new standard for how the industry handles baggage.”

Gaurav Gupta, SVP and global head of sales for Travel & Transport at Idemia, explains that “as a result of our strong legacy with biometrics and many decades of computer vision expertise, we have developed the Augmented Luggage Identification Experience (ALIX TM), an AI-driven baggage image matching solution” to be integrated into SITA’s baggage portfolio.

The two companies say the partnership helps address the critical industry challenge of navigating complex integrations to achieve interoperability.

SA’s Red Sea Airport equipped with SITA tech suite

SITA has also announced a strategic partnership with Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea International Airport (RSI), which will make it one of the Specialized Airport Systems (SAS) providers for the airport’s new Main Terminal Building.

The kingdom has been promoting the Red Sea area as a luxury resort destination as it increases outreach to the global travel and tourism market. RSI airport is expected to serve one million guests annually by 2030, with a peak capacity of 900 passengers per hour.

The deal with SITA will see the firm provide tech for a variety of use cases, from passenger processing to baggage reconciliation, airport operations, and more. Per a release, SITA Flex and SITA’s Maestro departure control system will automate check-in and departure and “allow passengers to use their mobile device as their remote control for the journey.”

For baggage, SITA Bag Manager will provide “advanced baggage reconciliation” by “tracking every bag loaded onto a plane, ULD, or cart in real time throughout the airport. Data monitoring capabilities will leverage infrastructure already deployed by SITA in RSI’s Air Taxi Terminal.

Notably, officials from Red Sea International Airport cite sustainability as a major factor in the facility’s relationship with SITA. “By leveraging advanced innovations, we aim to demonstrate our dedication to environmental stewardship and sustainable practices,” says RSI Chief Guest Experience Officer Andrew Tyler Smith. “In SITA we have found a trusted technology partner attuned to that mission and able to deliver the agile, reliable, and seamlessly interoperable solutions to make our vision a reality.”

Digital Travel Credentials a ‘key innovation’

That sustainability is a stated priority for airports is no surprise, given that it is also a priority for passengers. SITA’s Passenger IT Insights report says travelers show a “strong willingness to pay extra to offset carbon emissions and make behavioral changes, such as taking longer flights or carrying lighter baggage, to reduce their carbon footprint.”

For its part, the industry is also aiming to make the travel journey as convenient as possible by offloading some of the “weight” of physical credentials. DTCs will help ease bottlenecks as passenger volumes increase, making processing more efficient and more secure.

SITA’s report says “the outlook for the future of DTCs is highly promising, given that in total three in four passengers would be comfortable having their passport stored on their phone (75 percent) and similar numbers would be comfortable with providing their digital identity and biometrics in advance of travel (73 percent).” Eighty-five percent believe that having a DTC would be useful to their journey.

Biometrics solve space, staff issues – and, yes, lines

“Alongside digital travel credentials,” says the SITA report, “one of the key areas of technology which could help to resolve these issues would be the wider use of biometrics across the travel experience.”

That goes beyond the benefits of shorter line-ups (which, as established, are significant) to encompass a solution to staff shortages and a lack of space – “both challenges that biometric technology can enable the industry to overcome.”

In a significant trend, the report concludes that travelers’ top reservations about biometrics include data privacy, potential for identity theft or fraud and data misuse – in no small part because they often don’t know what the heck any of it means.

The report doubles down on the need for the industry to educate and reassure people about the safety and security of biometric systems at airports. But it also concedes that “there is a need for education as to what exactly biometrics are, how they are used and what makes them so beneficial to the traveler.”

They hate line-ups in Malaysia, too

Malaysia’s Immigration Department has announced plans to install 40 new Datasonic autogates equipped with QR code technology at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) Terminals 1 and 2 by the end of the year.

According to Says, the upgraded biometric e-gates are designed to process travellers in under five seconds, down from about 10 to 15 – an improvement to facilitate the expansion of the service from mostly Malaysians to citizens of 63 countries.

Datasonic e-gates feature an in-house facial recognition engine, liveness detection to secure against spoofing, and data-driven evaluation criteria and development processes to improve performance over time.

Article Topics

airports  |  biometrics  |  contactless biometrics  |  Datasonic  |  digital identity  |  digital travel  |  digital travel credentials  |  IDEMIA  |  Idemia Public Security  |  SITA