IAD is the only US airport I've flown through in recent months (I am EU-based) but I first saw them doing it back in August and have seen it on every ex-IAD flight since. It didn't seem any faster than scanning passports to me - each person still has to stop, line up w the camera, remove their mask if they are wearing one, etc - but I guess it makes sense if this is just a beta. Good point on the lack of passport check though.

I ran into this for the first time in SFO back in September. I had not heard anything beforehand and there was no signage. I asked the GA how I could opt out if I wanted and she said by taking a different flight. Everybody on my flight was required to stand in front of the camera without a mask and then passports were still checked with the BP like the olden days.

I am OK with this now that I have read about it but I wish UA had emailed in advance. I think it is great the global entry kiosks no longer require fingerprints, much faster and fewer touch points.

As for the comment that the Federal Government knows more about us than we think, facebook knows more!

Flying UA IAD is the only airport I've encountered it and it didn't work that well. GA reverted to scanning BPs. Flying DL I've encountered it at ATL and DTW with the same results as UA. I first encountered facial recognition 4 years ago in MCO flying LH and it worked great.

As far as I'm aware, they never scanned passports (by machine). Having passport out was an extra check to avert the chance of UA being fined due to inadmissible pax who had, say, forgetten passport at home.

I think the face machines have improved. I first encountered one at IAD 2019, and it was slow and finicky. Now I have had it at several hubs, and it is pretty quick and robust.

They still make me a bit uncomfortable (posted previously about this), but I gave up trying to avoid it. This is the modern condition, I suppose. 🤷‍♀️

As others have said this is in use at SFO for international departures. I've hit it seen it multiple times over the past few months. Seemed to work for 100% of people using it, with the exception of one person carrying a small child where they didn't use it for either the adult or the child. (In fairness I boarded relatively early in both cases so it's not a great sample size)

If you're a US citizen, they have your passport photo (plus your Global Entry card photos, and potentially others). If you're not a US citizen, they have a photo of you from when you entered the US, and/or the copy of the photo from your passport (either the bio page, or more likely the e-passport chip) and/or visas. Remember, they aren't having to match it against every person they know - just a few hundred records max as they already know who is on the flight. In the terms of facial recognition, it's a "one-to-few" match rather than the "one-to-many" style matching that normally concerns people.

Clearly there is a distinct differences of exit control strategy between say, Australia and the UK or Canada and the US. However, this CBP web-page "Document Requirements for Air Travel" gave me a new perspective (emphasis added)
"All U.S. citizens and nonimmigrant aliens from Canada, Bermuda, and Mexico departing from or entering the United States from within the Western Hemisphere at air ports of entry are required to present a valid passport, NEXUS card (if utilizing a NEXUS kiosk when departing from a designated Canadian airport), Merchant Mariner Document (for U.S. citizens traveling on official business), or Military Identification Card (for members of the U.S. armed forces traveling on official orders). Note that children are also required to present their own passport when traveling by air.Requirements for lawful permanent residents of the United States are not changed by the implementation of WHTI. Lawful permanent residents must continue to present a valid Permanent Resident Card. A passport is not required."
Source: https://www.cbp.gov/travel/us-citize...ocs-air-travel
It's passing strange to me that air travel exit requirements can come under a different legal structure than boats, trains, auto, kayak or foot travel, but I suppose that's why IANAL.
Of course nothing, despite the 4 document options outlined by the US government above, ever stopped my friends at UA from demanding passport, passport and nothing but passport. (Unless and until they're distracted by the whiz-bang facial recognition technology they're currently struggling to implement.)

No doubt there's some truth to this, but as usual with airlines in general, the threat of having to transport a pax back at their cost results in the application being amplified to the point of bizarre. Recent case in point; Travelling MCO-EWR-YYZ. Staff at MCO demands to see my passport before they will allow me to board MCO-EWR. No confirmation that my passport is with me at check-in, instead they wait until I'm literally at the gate to turn me back out of the boarding line to the gate counter to show my passport. For a domestic leg. And no, Nexus is not acceptable to UA for whatever their mysterious purpose is. Of course, I'm able to enter Canada and then return to the US by land without ever once showing my passport to government/immigration entities, but UA trudges on, blithely demanding passports be produced and inspected for domestic flights.

Let's stick to the use of facial recognition for UA flights in this thread. Larger, non-UA specific issues are best saved for
Travel Safety/Security
or Checkpoints and Borders Policy Debate

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

This was in use for IAD-GVA last Thursday evening at Gate C7. Granted we stayed in the Polaris lounge past the beginning of boarding, so we missed all pre-boarding announcements, but I saw no signage (digital or paper) in/around the gate area describing the process or what to do if you preferred not using it. I think the entire scan/approval to board took less than three-four seconds.

At SFO, I'd always been able to (hopefully politely) decline and scan boarding pass instead with no questions, until my last departure, when the GA gave me a sermon about how the government has all our data anyways and how he can't understand everyone being afraid. Then he told me biometric boarding will soon be mandatory. Is this true? Regardless of citizenship?

I told the GA I'll wait till it's mandatory to use it, and bizarrely even though he let me scan my boarding pass, he was brusque about it and shoulder checked me when he walked past. Seems to me like his job is in more peril if this becomes default.

I suspect eventually it may become mandatory -- and is possibly mandatory for non-US Citizen travelers -- but there is no official timeline and 'soon' in US government programs can be measured in decades (Like, for example, the REAL ID requirement that was to take effect in 2008, er...now apparently 2025) but for now, and assuming you were boarding an international departure since I haven't seen UA using biometric boarding for any other purpose, CBP specifies (https://www.cbp.gov/about/congressio...ion-technology)



This is the line over which I would contact UA customer care post haste -- there is no excuse for that behavior. And if an employee were to commit the act of battery upon me I'd personally be inclined to file a police report on the spot. The chances of anything legal happening are slim but physical contact crosses the line beyond which bad customer service is demarcated and should be documented, even if it involves missing a flight IMO.

(In California battery is defined in Penal Code section 242 as "A battery is any willful and unlawful use of force or violence upon the person of another.")

This biometric face recognition process was also used last week for GUM-ROR (Guam, USA to Koror, Palau) in lieu of boarding pass scanning. It went very smoothly and efficiently. :tu: 🇬🇺 🇵🇼

Just experienced the face-recognition boarding on a recent IAH-PTY. It took quite a while. The purser made a few jokes about 'we'll take our time to board so we can use technology for the sake of technology.'

Worked fine for me when I pre-boarded.

Same experience at SFO for an int'l flight. Tried to opt out. GA stated it was mandatory.

To comply with the Privacy Act and the CBP SORN there should be a sign in the vicinity of the gate, an example of which can be seen @ https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/02/cu...der-face-data/ and the sign reads\

(Emphasis mine).

If agents are stating that it is mandatory depending on how you want to play ask them to cite the USC, CFR, or CoC section that makes it mandatory or request a supervisor and/or CBP representative who can correct their misapprehension.