Biometrics, technology and the aviation passenger experience

Ekelem Airhihen, a chartered accountant, is an airport customer experience specialist. He can be reached on ekyair@yahoo.com and +2348023125396 (WhatsApp only)

It is estimated that roughly four billion people travel everyday. In the world of Air Transport 2019, ICAO’s preliminary compilation of annual global statistics, the total number of passengers carried on scheduled services rose to  4.5 billion in 2019, which is 3.6 percent higher than the previous year, while the number of departures reached 38.3 million in 2019, a 1.7 percent increase. Africa in this report accounted for 2.1 percent of world traffic, posting growth of 4.3 percent.

Moving from curb to cabin in an airport can become a very frustrating and tiring experience for the passenger because of security checks. When passengers are in a hurry or stressed, and may be thinking of making purchases in duty free shops, the experience of waiting to drop off their bags, or to remove their shoes and belts while going through security call up emotions that impinge on the passenger experience.

Biometrics are going to radically change this experience. Bloomberg paints a picture as follows: “Many of us will be driven to the terminal by autonomous cars; our eyes, faces, and fingers will be scanned; and our bags will have a permanent ID that allows them to be whisked from our homes before we even set out. Some of these airports will no longer be relegated to the outskirts of town — they will merge with city centres, becoming new destination “cities” within a city for people without travel plans. Shall we get dinner, watch a movie, see a concert, shop? People will choose to go to the airport. Your employer may even relocate there.” (In ‘Airports of the Future Are Here’).

The trend is evolving where someday the airport will know everything about everyone moving at the airport. It will be such that the airport deploys a security infrastructure that is constantly screening people from the door to the gate. It goes thus: travellers authenticate themselves once and for all, either on their mobile device or on their tablet well before departure or at a terminal or the desk upon arrival at the airport.

Subsequently, there will be no more need for a passport or boarding pass! No more placing fingers in readers as with the older-generation gates; just smile at your laptop or check-in terminal! This unique biometric identifier will stay with you until your departure, there will be no infringement whatsoever of the regulatory framework.

It is the passenger’s facial biometry that is used to validate the successive steps: check-in, baggage drop, security check, boarding, etc. Maybe by leveraging technology one can imagine a way of paying for duty-free shopping or a snack by merely looking at a camera! – suggests the thalesgroup ( www.thalesgroup.com)

Obviously in keeping with data protection regulation, a strict legal framework is already in place for the protection of biometric data, and this is to be further reinforced in the future. The biometric data is erased as soon as the flight departs or, in some cases, upon completion of the return flight. Really, it is just used as a common point of reference for the different checks and controls.

AENA is an airport operator company that manages 69 airports around the world. It launched an innovation and digital transformation based on using technology to improve current business and to develop new businesses, and at the end of 2021, launched its Innovation Strategic Plan.

In the deployment of biometrics, the pilot phases were incremental. They added a new use case in each new pilot, until achieving a full biometric journey from home to the boarding gate.

The concept is based on the identification technology through the recognition of the physical and non-transferable characteristics of people. On registration by a passenger in the biometrics programme, a biometric single token ID of the passenger is created. This is made up of ID document and/or passport data, the biometric feature, and the boarding pass. As a biometric feature, the airport uses facial recognition.

This is touchless and less intrusive than other types of biometric recognition. As a result, this token allows passengers to go through various airport touchpoints just showing their faces, without needing to show ID documents or boarding pass (International Airport Review, August, 2022).

It states further that a passenger who has registered and the biometric token has been created, this registration is valid until the ID document expires or up to two years if the service is not used in a frequent way. It could be updated by the passenger at any time. In this way the airport ensures that a passenger already registered in the biometric programme does not have to do any extra steps to use biometrics when travelling on future occasions.

So, at any time the passenger checks in with an airline taking part in the biometric programme, the boarding pass obtained will be automatically associated with the identity token stored in the biometric database.

Faced with increasingly dense air traffic, over the years, airports and airlines have very widely opted for the deployment of automatic systems to free up bottlenecks in passenger flows. These bottlenecks can be a very problematic issue at peak times so these automatic systems alleviate by simplifying the check-in process.

Studies show that the more passengers have access to the use of technology, the higher the rate of satisfaction is, the resultant effect is that the passenger experience at the airport is improved.