SITA is definitely using facial recognition and not a retinal scan (like Clear uses). FWIW, I've never had any issues being recognized using Clear's retinal scan.

-FlyerBeek

Please keep this optional and transparent.

An open source solution would make the process more secure and more trustworthy. Registering my bio-metric data to a 3rd party cloud software company is not something I want to do in order to fly. I understand the government already has my bio-metric data from my drivers license to passport and global entry enrollment. I agree to it so that I can drive and travel across boarders. I get that the airline receives the data - there are also regulations regarding the use of this data. Not so much when it involves a 3rd party corporation that one has to enroll with. It unnecessarily opens everyone's immutable data to additional attack vectors. (I do not have social media)

Clear uses a photo of your iris, not a "scan" of your retina. If you've ever had a photo taken of your retina, you would know when that was being done: think holding your eyes extremely still and then having a very bright camera flash an inch away

Fair enough. I actually should have known better having previously undergone a retina scan. Nonetheless, Clear is an eye scan while SITA uses a facial scan. Would be interested to hear of other FTer's recent experience with the biometric boarding at SFO E5/E6.

-FlyerBeek

FWIW, FT is one of the many fora / online communities so it too is social media.

David

Going to be kind of weird the first time someone advertises "free flights for anyone with the same name AND facial bone structure as my ex girlfriend" ( https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...und-world-trip ).

I always back out of this. I find it slower than scanning a boarding pass, so why subject myself to this?

the carrot they are offering for the trial is pre- pre- boarding, i.e. before any of the normal pre-boarding groups

Still not interested.

Not trying to be negative, but nothing can be faster than scanning a barcode from a boarding pass, let alone something that makes me look into a camera angled a certain way, only to see my face on a screen. That inevitably takes the same time, if not (and I would presume) a little bit longer.

Even if something could be faster than a boarding pass, you’d still have jet bridge congestion.

Let’s work on frying the bigger fish.

Just did this at SFO with my +1. It took me three tries with my Colorado DL to be processed. My +1 twice. There is no "do over" of the ID scan if the machine has trouble, it just barfs and puts you all the way back to the start of the process, which requires checking in again. And I had help from a UA employee who was doing her very best to make it work.

We do leave from one of the designated gates, but we're pre-board/wheelchair, so I don't know if that will work or not - TBD.

Doesn't have to be faster, it just needs to be ale to reduce the # of GA required to board.

While I agree in concept by necessity we already trust SITA (Société Internationale de Télécommunications Aéronautiques, owned by its membership which is primarily airlines and airports) with so much personal data [passport, PNR/APIS data, ...] and so much of the travel process (CUTE/CUPPS, CUSS, and WorldTracer among others are all SITA initiatives) and infrastructure (messaging, operations communications, etc) I'm personally more likely to trust SITA than most governments and any social media.

I do believe that this should be opt-in only though and it doesn't seem like it's mandatory: Like CLEAR or Global Entry one is free to weigh their personal pros and cons against the inherent value of their biometric data. For me I feel the speed tradeoffs for GE and CLEAR are particularly worth it; I'm not sure I feel the same way about boarding as one of the key benefits to CLEAR and GE are the "skip the line" aspect -- given that boarding all winds up in the same jetway... But to each his or her own...

Even for a full widebody these days I rarely see more than one GA dedicated to boarding. When there is more than on GA, it seems to be the airlines' decision to provide a higher level of touch, not a need. One GA can board people faster than people can settle in on the plane.

Even if everyone were using the facial recognition boarding, they would still need to have a GA monitoring the process - helping people with problems, watching bags, etc. So it's not clear to me how this leads to any efficiency.

Datapoint from my flight yesterday - both myself and +1 were not detected by the camera during boarding and had to scan our boarding passes. Hard pass on future tests until I hear that the technology has improved.

Indeed, within the CONUS at least it multiple agents tends to be more a case of "we have an agent already on the clock with some downtime, let's send them to help out" than "we need a bunch of agents for ticket lift" -- frequently when there are multiple agents doing boarding it seems like, if any effect at all, slows things down ever so slightly because the line has to split and re-merge. An additional agent can be helpful with things like printing bag tags at the gate, etc. -- and perhaps the idea is to make agent boarding more passive so a single agent can do that and catch the corner cases but you can do that without biometric boarding -- see for example the "self boarding" gates UA tried in Boston and many airlines on other continents make extensive use of.

On the other hand internationally UA seems to like allocating an larger number of agents to gates -- on my way out of GRU in November, for example, there were at least 4-5 agents actively working the gate plus one supervisor-looking-type working the crowd not to mention the random security-types that are a staple of the UA international travel experience. -- perhaps if biometrics eliminate the need to have the passport-vs-traveler continuously reverified that would allow staffing reductions at those stations.