Biometrics
Transforming Air Travel:
Key Benefits of Biometrics at Airports
Efficiency, Security,
and Privacy with
Airport Biometrics
DOWNLOAD NOW: Read SITA’s Biometrics White Paper.
Discover how to increase airport capacity, speed up passenger processing, and improve security.
Soaring passenger numbers
Given soaring passenger numbers, biometric technology will play an important role in helping airports stay efficient. How else will your team deliver the right customer experience – handling peaks, controlling queues, managing security – in a way that doesn’t create friction? When the passenger’s face can be their boarding pass or even their passport, your life becomes simpler.
Friction-free travel
By using facial recognition, passengers no longer need to fumble with boarding passes or IDs — your face becomes your passport. If you’re the Operations Director or CTO of an airport, you’ll want to get ahead of the curve. Need to learn more about how biometric technology can transform airport operations? Download our free biometrics white paper today and discover the future of air travel.
Biometrics in action
Airports and airlines are adopting SITA’s biometric technology to enhance security and improve the passenger experience.
Global air travel is expected to surge. Biometric systems offer the ideal solution to increase airport capacity, streamline passenger flows, and reduce queues. SITA's biometrics systems are currently in use at 40 airports worldwide, including major hubs like Doha and Beijing.
What are the benefits of biometric technology at airports?
Biometrics may sound like one of those subjects you didn’t enjoy at school. While SITA’s tech is sophisticated, the biometric process is remarkably smooth and simple for airports, airlines and passengers. Biometrics check-in solutions offer opportunities for airports and airlines to create seamless passenger experience that works like clockwork – speeding up passenger flows, cutting costs and reducing the need for human intervention.
Integration
SITA’s APIs and smart tech make it easy for airlines and airports to integrate biometrics into their own apps and systems.
Enrollment
Using a smartphone, the passenger enrolls their biometric data on the airline app (or other digital platform). In other words, they take a picture of their face which is securely linked to their air tickets or other travel credentials.
Verification
Then, using live data captured at the airport (such as facial recognition), the passenger’s identity is matched against their previously enrolled data.
This has three clear benefits for airports and airlines, and at borders:
It’s quicker and easier to process passengers with biometrics. In short, you get shorter queues. No more fumbling for boarding passes; no more juggling baggage; not more asking for identity cards.
Machines are simply better at facial recognition than your staff. Biometric matching is faster and more discerning – so the system is more efficient, reliable and secure. This helps speed up all subsequent security processes as the system recognizes the same person.
Privacy is assured. Passengers remain in control of their own information, giving permission to share only as much data is required at each stage of the journey.
Biometric security solutions make boarding at borders simpler. Using facial recognition, biometric devices check your identity against databases such as the USA’s Custom and Border Protection service. Effectively, your face can become your passport.
Built on SITA’s long track record in aviation innovation, our tech is years ahead of the competition.
In addition to running biometrics at major international airports such as Doha and Beijing, SITA successfully completed an end-to-end trial at leading tourist destination Aruba. With SITA’s Smart Path program, verified passengers were able to walk straight off the plane and head for their hotels without time-consuming passport control.
How does facial recognition improve air travel security?
Some people wonder if biometrics raises issues of security and privacy for passengers. This may be true for a small cohort of particularly sensitive customers. So it’s important to offer passengers reassurance on privacy and security, as well as an ‘opt-out’ option.
In reality, most biometric data for air travel use is temporary. The system is only interested in one-time information at the point of travel, and the data is deleted immediately thereafter.
For ‘permanent’ travel credentials, such as passports or visas, the data is securely stored but that’s not any different from how these systems work currently.
World leader in travel tech
SITA’s experience is that passengers like biometrics. And for one very simple reason: their journey is simpler, quicker and smoother. For example, biometrics make secure self-drop baggage a reality – with big operational benefits and cost-savings for airports and baggage handlers.
And when you think about other services which often use biometrics – such as your banking app – it’s plain that the security benefits are valued by customers. When your face is your own private, secure key to services, you are literally recognized as an individual.
So, like the old Amex campaign “Do you know me?”, biometrics also allows airlines and airports to recognize different types of customer:
- Can facial recognition give loyal customers access to lounges
- Can you offer targeted discounts in airport stores, preferential booking in restaurants or simplified hotel check-in and car hire pick-up?
- Can you offer additional support to passengers with special needs, for example, helping you comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
In this way, biometrics makes it simpler to offer a tailored customer experience – while increasing the efficiency of operational resources.
Real world innovation
At SITA, we recognise that biometrics may feel like a significant investment for an airport. Yet, with global passenger numbers predicted to surge from around 5 billion now to around 10 billion by 2040, every airport needs new ideas to manage passenger flows more efficiently.
That’s why SITA has invested so heavily in biometrics – technology that actually works for airlines and airports. Based on 75 years’ in-depth work with the air travel industry, we understand the complexities, frustrations and issues of airports large and small.
Our tech is in effective operation at 40 airports globally – with around 5000 biometric touchpoints. Our software developer kit and APIs give airlines a quick, simple way to deploy biometrics in their business and deliver an enhanced, competitive passenger experience.
Years ahead in
biometric innovation
With decades of operational experience at airports, we know what it takes to keep delivering stellar service to demanding passengers (and stakeholders) in a fast-moving, live environment.
Learn more about the future of airports in our Biometrics White Paper.
