The agony of airports is about to end. Maybe.
Within a few years you’ll apparently be able to move through departures without even taking your phone or your passport out of your pocket.
It’s part of an international plan to digitise air travel, replacing boarding passes and check-in desks with facial recognition technology.
Boarding passes and the need to check-in for flights will be scrapped as part of plans to overhaul the aviation industry in the biggest shake-up in 50 years.
Boarding passes and the need to check-in for flights will be scrapped as part of plans to overhaul the aviation industry in the biggest shake-up in 50 years.
If everything goes according to plan, passengers will be able to upload their passports to their phone and pass through airports using only their face for verification within “two to three years”.
The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the UN body responsible for policy, is tearing up existing rules for airports and airlines and creating a new “digital travel credential”, allowing passport information stored on devices to be used for travel, The Times reported this weekend.
Checking in for flights online or at the airport will become obsolete. Instead passengers will be able to download a “journey pass” to their phone when they book a flight. It will be automatically updated if any changes are made to the booking. Yep, good luck with that.
With no check-in desks, airlines will be alerted to a passenger’s intention to fly when they arrive at the airport and their face is scanned.
For passengers with check-in luggage this will be at bag drop.
Those travelling with just hand-luggage will first be scanned at the pre-security gates, which permit passengers access to the airport’s central search area.
Currently passengers must check-in online or at the airport on arrival, where they are issued with a boarding pass with a barcode which is scanned as a passenger proceeds through the airport, including at the gate before boarding.
“These changes are the biggest in 50 years,” said Valérie Viale, director of product management at Amadeus, the world’s largest travel technology company. “Many airline systems haven’t changed for more than 50 years because everything has to be consistent across the industry and interoperable.
“The last upgrade of great scale was the adoption of e-ticketing in the early 2000s. The industry has now decided it’s time to upgrade to modern systems that are more like what Amazon would use.”
The plans will require physical infrastructure at airports to be upgraded so they have facial recognition technology and the ability to read a passport from a mobile device.
Currently passengers must check-in online or at the airport on arrival, where they are issued with a boarding pass with a barcode which is scanned as a passenger proceeds through the airport, including at the gate before boarding.
“These changes are the biggest in 50 years,” said Valérie Viale, director of product management at Amadeus, the world’s largest travel technology company. “Many airline systems haven’t changed for more than 50 years because everything has to be consistent across the industry and interoperable.
“The last upgrade of great scale was the adoption of e-ticketing in the early 2000s. The industry has now decided it’s time to upgrade to modern systems that are more like what Amazon would use.”
The plans will require physical infrastructure at airports to be upgraded so they have facial recognition technology and the ability to read a passport from a mobile device.
Crucially, the physical infrastructure will only verify the information - matching face to passport - and not store it, to, allegedly, remove the risk of data breaches.
At present, the airline process is static. You book a flight and then 48 or 24 hours before departure the check-in opens online. At this point your passport details are entered and, in the case of the UK, passed to the Home Office (UK airports do not have departure border formalities). You are also assigned your seat which then can’t be changed without reissuing the boarding pass.
With the new technology, passengers will be able to download the “journey pass” to the wallet on their phone, which will contain all the booking details, including any auxiliaries such as car hire that was bought with the flight. Also stored in the wallet will be biometric passport details.
Together with the use of facial recognition, passengers will be able to move through the airport without taking their phone or passport out of their pockets. Aware of the privacy risk, Amadeus said it has developed a system in which a passengers’ details are wiped within 15 seconds of each contact with a “touchpoint” - such as the pre-security gates.
“At the moment airlines have systems that are very siloed,” Viale told The Times.
With the new technology, passengers will be able to download the “journey pass” to the wallet on their phone, which will contain all the booking details, including any auxiliaries such as car hire that was bought with the flight. Also stored in the wallet will be biometric passport details.
Together with the use of facial recognition, passengers will be able to move through the airport without taking their phone or passport out of their pockets. Aware of the privacy risk, Amadeus said it has developed a system in which a passengers’ details are wiped within 15 seconds of each contact with a “touchpoint” - such as the pre-security gates.
“At the moment airlines have systems that are very siloed,” Viale told The Times.
“There’s the reservation system that, when check-in opens, makes a handshake with a delivery system and says ‘here are my reservations, you can now deliver them’. In the future it’ll be far more continuous and the journey pass will be dynamic.”
It all sounds great in theory. But how many countries will adopt the new tech? Will workers rebel against the loss of jobs?
And what happens when your phone battery runs out of charge, you can't access the wifi, or you land in Fat Arse, Idaho, and they demand to see your baggage tag? We shall see.
Image: Sven Bock, Scop.io
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