Biometrics could replace boarding passes on international flights within 4 years
Biometrics could replace boarding passes on international
flights within 4 years
Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY Published 3:01 p.m. ET Feb.
1, 2018 | Updated 5:38 p.m. ET Feb. 1, 2018
LOS ANGELES — Goodbye passport, so long boarding pass.
And get ready for this — your means of entry at airports could soon just be
your face.
Dan Tanciar, a top official with the U.S. Customs and
Border Protection Agency, told USA TODAY that biometrics for international
travelers, which allow passengers to board a flight or clear passport control
via a photo, is right around the corner.
“Our goal is to have this in place over the next four
years,” said Tanciar, who is a deputy executive director of the Customs and
Border Protection agency.
The plan is to begin with international flights then
expand to domestic, he added.
“On inbound international travel, you’ll be able to leave
the passport in your pocket,” he added.
Tanciar says biometrics at the airport works by matching
the picture the government already has, your passport photo, with a new image
generated at the airport.
Using biometric technology for domestic flights will take
longer to implement, he says, because the TSA doesn’t have the same kind of
national database of photos as the U.S. government does with passports. Each
state would have to come together to merge their driver’s license IDs.
Three airlines are currently testing limited biometric
entry: JetBlue, British Airways and Delta at airports in Boston, Atlanta and
Los Angeles, but passports are still involved.
Delta, in its test, has ditched the boarding pass only
for flights from Atlanta to Paris, while JetBlue offers the service from Boston
to Aruba.
At Los Angeles International Airport, British Airways is
offering biometric entry for some international flights, instead of a boarding
pass. Lufthansa, Qantas and Korean Air plan to install similar offerings at LAX
this month.
The San Jose airport hopes to go 100% biometric for
international travels this year. "Our intention is to be the first airport
in the United States" to feature the service for all international
flights, says Rebecca Baer, the deputy director of Innovation and business
development at SJC.
Baer, along with Tanciar, spoke this week at the APEX
Tech conference in Los Angeles, put on by the Airline Passenger Experience
Association.
For domestic flights, she sees a way around waiting for
the TSA to join Customs in adding the services by using an opt-in system,
similar to how fliers sign up (and pay) with the TSA for preauthorized
clearances at airports.
“I could voluntarily give the airline or government my
pictures and verify my ID the same way we do with a passport, like we do with a
precheck,” she says.
The advantage Customs has over the TSA in getting the
program moving is that international travel is a smaller volume, she says, and
there are different requirements for international travelers.
“If we created a system that relied on a voluntary
submission, it could come a lot faster.”
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