KLM Testing Facial Recognition System as Replacement for Boarding Passes

The pilot program at the airline’s Amsterdam hub will allow pre-screened volunteers to board flights by simply smiling at a camera.

KLM is in the process of testing facial recognition software that it hopes will someday speed the entire boarding and check-in process at the airport by allowing passengers to take their seats on the plane without ever reaching for identification or a boarding pass. The pilot program at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS) is relying on pre-screened volunteers to live-test the new biometric boarding scheme.

The tests at the busy KLM hub will last at least three months. Qualified passengers will be permitted to board through special lanes at select gates at the airport. For the sake of redundancy, passengers participating in the study are currently being carefully vetted and ID’ed before being allowed to board flights by using the new facial recognition protocols. It is expected that this sort of pre-screening and verification will eventually occur long before passengers arrive at the airport should the new technology be rolled out permanently.

To address privacy concerns, the airline claims that biometric data collected at the airport will be deleted within 10 days of boarding a flight. Installing facial recognition at every gate has certain obvious security implications, but the airline says this is not the primary goal of the program at all.

“The ultimate aim is to make the boarding process as quick and easy as possible for our passengers,” a KLM official told Planet Biometrics.

While the facial recognition system seems at first to be on the very cutting edge of technology, biometric screening in the name of both security and efficiency appears to very much be the future of air travel. Dozens of airports across the US already allow passengers to skip to the front of security lines with only the ID, itinerary and background information linked to their thumbprints.

Using parallel technology, an engineer flying through Stockholm Arlanda Airport (ARN) was able to check in for his flight, pass through security, access a club lounge and board his plane with only a wave of his hand. The executive at Paris-based tech firm Sogeti accomplished the science fiction-worthy feat by injecting a NFC (Near Field Communication) chip into the top of his hand.

[Photo: Shutterstock]