New Airport Checks Are Set For Take-Off
Having passed through five European airports so far this year I can attest that it is getting harder.
Not their fault, of course, but security threats and passenger growth combine to form longer than ever queues at every step from car park to plane and vice versa.
Post Brexit, it could be far worse.
My experience of facial recognition checks at passport controls has been mixed, breezing through here, getting frustrated there.
Airports worldwide, though, believe wider deployment of biometrics will speed things up in the future.
Last month, Delta Airlines announced its plan to scrub passport and boarding card checks for its passengers at Atlanta Airport and use just facial recognition throughout. Having checked in at a self-service kiosk in the lobby, passengers will be biometrically identified as they drop bags for the hold, pass through security checking, proceed through the boarding gate and again on stepping off a return flight.
At the new Terminal 4 of Singapore’s Changi Airport, some of this is already in operation, although passports and boarding cards are also still required for self-scanning.
Security queues are being speeded up there by new scanning techniques that allow laptops and tablets to stay in carry-on bags.
At Dubai, they are building a next generation solution.
‘Going through security’ will be a walk through an ‘aquarium style’ tunnel fitted with 80 facial and iris recognition cameras.
Scenes projected on the tunnel walls, such as fish swimming or camels in a desert, will attract the eye to look at the unseen cameras as a passenger walks through.
The ‘intrusion lobby’ are campaigning against these solutions, but if it cuts the queues, count me in.
