Philippines’ busiest airport bringing Amadeus biometric e-gates online

Biometric electronic gates from Amadeus are coming online at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in the Philippines during December.

The Amadeus Immigration eGates have already been installed at NAIA Terminals 1 and 3, and will be activated by the New NAIA Infra Corp. (NNIC) for operation by the Bureau of Immigration to automate border control procedures with passport scans and face biometrics. They will begin to go live during December and reach full operation early in 2026. The change is expected to reduce wait times for travelers and increase passenger throughput, according to the announcement from NAIA.

Amadeus’ e-gates will align with the biometric passenger touchpoints for check-in, security screening and boarding that NNIC is rolling out.

The Philippines’ government allocated PHP1.347 billion (approximately US$24 million) for the second phase of the biometric e-gates installation earlier this year to follow on from an initial PHP1.976 billion ($35.4 million) investment.

NAIA processed more than 50 million passengers last year, and is already over its original design capacity.

There were now 517 biometric-enabled passenger processing units deployed at NAIA, as of an announcement of measures to cope with the expected surge of passengers for Oplan Undas 2025 at the beginning of November. The same announcement noted the ongoing installation of an additional 78 e-gates for immigration.

Amadeus SVP for Border Authorities Jeff Lennon told Biometric Update in a recent interview about the company’s installation of a biometric Seamless Corridor for passenger processing at Indonesian airports that “on-the-move” biometrics are enabled by the technologies developed for effective image capturing at e-gates.

The next step for NAIA may be to lean further into digital ID, as IATA urged airports to do instead of relying on physical barriers for security in its recent DIPIP report.

Article Topics

ABC gates  |  airport biometrics  |  Amadeus  |  biometrics  |  face biometrics  |  passenger processing  |  Philippines