Biometric Airport Terminals
-- posted January 2019 --
Two months ago, Delta opened the first biometric terminal in the U.S. at the Atlanta’s International Airport, where passenger identification is performed by a facial recognition system. To check in their luggage, or go through security checkpoints and boarding gates at terminals, travelers need only to visit a self-service station and look at a camera for a few seconds. Next, biometric identification technology employs image processing and compares the photos taken by the camera to a database of photos created and maintained by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The system quickly identifies passengers and let them proceed to the next checkpoint. With that, the technology eliminates the need for showing the passport and the boarding pass multiple times between arriving at the airport and boarding the airplane.
The current biometric terminal is optional, so if passengers opt out they have the option to go through a traditional identification by presenting their passport and/or boarding pass. It is also worth mentioning that the implemented facial recognition technology is not perfect: the overall success rate is about 98%; the 2% of the travelers in the failed facial recognition group still need to go through a passport-based verification. And speaking of the failures of the technology, the cases of errors raised concerns among the lawmakers, as well as there are privacy concerns regarding the taken photos of travelers.
Delta anticipates that the biometric technology will improve customer flow through the security screening and boarding at the airport, reduce waiting times and document verification, and improve overall customer satisfaction. At times when most airports in large cities require to arrive at least three hours prior to departure for international flights and at least two hours earlier for domestic flights, biometric terminals offer a potential to reduce such ridiculous wait times. It is expected that biometric identification will be eventually adopted by other air-carriers and at all airports.
Biometric airport terminals with facial recognition technology are also being used in other countries, e.g., Japan, UK, China, Singapore, and the Netherlands. As well, a biometric identification system relying on iris recognition has been recently introduced at the Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, and it is referred to as “smart tunnel.”
The following 3:49 minute video explains the biometric terminal technology used by Delta in Atlanta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlsI8viEfXE&t=16s