Heathrow, Britain’s biggest airport goes hi-tech with the investment of £50 million in the new biometric technology expected to be rolled out in the next two months.
By summer the passengers need not show passports or boarding passes as the check-in and take-off process will get more streamlines. This will help in chopping the average passengers’ journey through the Heathrow airport by up to one third.
Passengers will get a seamless experience as the new technology uses facial recognition at check-in, bag drops, security lanes and boarding gates.
The airport mentioned that in October last year it started using using facial recognition in some stages of the passenger journey, for example on entry to the UK at the Border with biometric e-gates.
This technology is also applied for domestic journeys through the airport. However, this will be the first time that Heathrow will use the technology at every stage of the departing passenger’s journey.
Heathrow can thus boast of world’s largest deployment of biometric technology that will include bag drops and self-boarding gates.
The main aim of the long –term technology will help passengers walk through the airport without breaking their stride.
The technology was expanded and the feedback was positive. Manual authentication implies that a passenger will have to present forms of ID like as boarding cards, booking reference numbers as well as their passports to different agents to show that they’re authorised to travel.
Facial biometrics are more accurate than the manual checks, however, Heathrow will still allow travellers to choose not to use the facial recognition technology.
Alex Macheras, an aviation consultant said that major American airports already have this and Asia is light years ahead in technology.
It will work undoubtedly considering the convenience but customers will have concerns about how their data is protected and airports must be transparent about this.
Tags: Alex Macheras, biometric, Heathrow
