Facing facts about a secure travel ID

New methods eyed in order to cope with growth

THE TRAVEL industry is planning to replace your paper tickets and security documents with your biometric data in an effort to ease gridlock.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation, the UN’S aviation body, met last week in Montreal to discuss ways to bridge the gulf between physical and digital travel documents.

At least 53 biometric systems are used by the industry for everything from airline boarding to hotel check-in, according to the World Travel & Tourism Council. Each is unique to a particular venue.

British Airways’ boarding gates in New York, Los Angeles, London and Orlando, for instance, use facial recognition, while Clear, a New York private security screening company, uses iris and fingerprint scans to move passengers through security checks.

“It’s very fragmented,” said Gloria Guevara, the council’s president and chief executive. “We need to make sure that there is interoperability among the different models.”

Reducing travel friction and increasing security is critical for the industry, which is expecting passenger growth from 4.6 billion this year to 8.2 billion in 2037 – a surge current methods would be unable to handle, Guevara said.

Beyond biometric security measures, airlines are working on new data standards for traveller records, called One ID, to “liberate the industry from a century of accumulated legacies”, Alexandre de Juniac, the chief executive of the airlines’ global trade group, the International Air Transport Association, said last week.

“With One ID, passengers will no longer be subject to repetitive document checks from check-in to the departure gate,” said de Juniac while addressing a crowd in Athens at a symposium on aviation data.

For biometric travelling to gain acceptance, it will need to allow people to opt for a “single-journey token” for personal data that would be saved and used for a single trip, Guevara said.

Last week, Delta Air Lines said it would expand facial-recognition boarding for international flights at 49 gates at its Atlanta, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City hubs.

British Airways says more than 250 000 customers “have experienced a glimpse of the journey of the future” by using their face to board at three US airports and its London Heathrow base over the past 18 months. Later this year, some airports and carriers will begin tests on the next step of this digital evolution: a complete travel experience from curb to destination. | Washington Post