Facial Recognition Will Play a Significant Role in the Future of Air Travel

You pack your bag with what you need for your trip and using your airline’s app you prepare to check in early.

You are asked to take a photo of your ID and a selfie. This will be registered and secured in your app and allow you access to a new, smoother, and safer experience ahead of boarding.

As an option, this registration can also be done at kiosks located at the airport in front of your airline’s area. This is called biometric registration.

Upon arrival at the airport, the check-in and screening points are equipped with terminals and cameras capable of taking an image of your face.

This will be validated from the biometric record you have already made in your travel application.

Subsequently, the biometric registration will allow that at the baggage drop-off point of your airline, this face capture will be enough to display on the screen the details of your flight, print the label to stick it on the suitcase, and place it on the band that will take it to the plane.

No More Waiting in Long Lines
When you cross the immigration filter, just as you did in the previous point, you will identify yourself with the capture of your face. The system will indicate to the authorities your destination and confirm the necessary details about your identity.

And the long lines to print your boarding pass, document, and validate your data? Well, that’s all solved thanks to the fact that your data can be retrieved from the biometric record and that personal information was securely shared with the airport’s passenger system.

Inside the boarding area, you wait for your flight departure in a VIP lounge. Again, you do not need to show your boarding pass, passport or airline loyalty card. You only need to allow a facial capture to gain access and get the benefit of biometric check-in.

When boarding your flight, a terminal camera at the boarding gate captures your face and will indicate your seat number and any relevant messages.

The experience up to boarding your flight has been made smoother by the technology described in your sudden trip and implemented by Thales as part of the Thales FlyToGate solution. Biometric enrollment and advanced security in using your data solve a common problem in the travel experience.

Today, many air terminals in different countries implement these biometric check-in solutions that use verified biometric information for each passenger.

At each check-in, a unique travel token associated with the face will accompany you at all check-in points within the airport until you board the plane. This translates into welfare for passengers, who are estimated to save up to 80 percent of their time waiting in lines inside the air terminal, ensuring the safe use of their information.

Biometric Recognition Technology
This new solution, Thales FlyToGate, will reduce the repeated presentation of identity documents, passports, or identity cards, as well as the boarding pass at several points before boarding the aircraft and its validation at each end.

This positively impacts people’s peace of mind, as it reduces waiting times and, thus, the stress involved in going through security control, immigration, and boarding.

Implementing these solutions is increasingly valued in air terminals worldwide, where traffic will increase in the coming years. Several analysts estimate that there will be more travelers by 2024 than there were in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Thales, the Thales FlyToGate solution will take advantage of airport infrastructure so that passenger processes will be more fluid, in addition to avoiding identity fraud and ensuring the security of passenger data.

Given these facts, more and more airports worldwide are investing in automated border control, self-service check-in, and baggage handling solutions that increase speed and efficiency while maintaining high levels of security for their travelers.