DigiYatra launched at three airports for face scan entry
NEW DELHI: Union civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Thursday launched the first phase of the Centre’s ambitious DigiYatra facility for three airports, where entry and boarding will be made more seamless with the use of a facial recognition system.
The minister launched the system for Delhi, Bengaluru and Varanasi airports from Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, and said data shared for it will be stored in a decentralised manner.
As part of the second phase, the system will be launched in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune and Vijayawada by March next year, he said.
The DigiYatra facility will allow passengers to link their travel and ID documents and create a facial scan beforehand, which will do away with the need for them to produce boarding passes or ID cards when they arrive at an airport, drop their baggage, or proceed for boarding.
Instead, passengers will need to look at a facial recognition camera for authentication.
Amid concerns over data theft and privacy issues, Scindia said the data shared for DigiYatra will be saved in an encrypted format.
“First, we thought of a centralised system that would house all the data but then issues of privacy, data theft, rightfully came up. So, we moved to a decentralised system which would house the passenger information... on the mobile phones of every single passenger,” he said.
“Your data is going to be in an encrypted format and it is going to be residing only in your (passenger) mobile phone... 24 hours after your travel, that data is going to be purged from servers at that airport,” he added.
The data that a passenger will upload will get completely wiped out in 24 hours even though it is protected by blockchain technology, Scindia said.
Blockchain refers to what is known as a distributed ledger system, which allows for consistency and transparency of information.
Scindia said the information on a passenger’s phone will be provided to the airport only 24 hours before the journey.
DigiYatra will provide a seamless process from the entry point until the embarkation point on planes, and no identification or boarding pass has to be shown by the passengers, Scindia said.
“It used to take around 10 seconds, but today, I could see passengers entering the airport in a few seconds,” Scindia said.
He also said the use of FRT is helping save time globally.
The service is available for users of both iPhones and Android-based smartphones, Scindia said.
For availing the service, a passenger has to register details on the DigiYatra app using Aadhaar-based validation and a self image capture.
In the next step, the boarding pass has to be scanned and the credentials are shared with the airport.
At the airport e-gate, the passenger has to first scan the bar coded boarding pass and the facial recognition system installed at the e-gate will validate the ID and travel document. Once this process is done, the passenger can enter the airport through the e-gate.
The passenger will have to follow the usual procedure to clear security and board the aircraft. “As of now, the facility will be available at Delhi’s terminal 3,” an airport official said, asking not to be named.