Singapore Airport May Find Late Passengers Using Facial Recognition

We’ve all sat in an airplane wondering why it’s not taking off only to find that the delay has been caused on a fellow passenger who decided to turn up at the gate later than they should have. Now perhaps that passenger just got lost or they got too distracted at the duty free shops but such delays may no longer be experienced by passengers flying out of Singapore’s Changi airport. It’s going to test facial recognition systems which will help locate late passengers.

Changi, widely regarded as one of the best airports in the world, has started testing facial recognition which may in the future allow it to locate passengers who are running late for their flights and have not yet turned up at the gate.

Changi Airport has actively been looking at smart technologies to improve many of its operations, be it the quicker prediction of flight arrivals or reducing taxi times on the runway.

It intends to mount cameras on lampposts in order to use facial recognition to locate late passengers. However, this has caused some to point out the potential privacy issues that this system could pose.

“We have lots of reports of lost passengers…so one possible use case we can think of is, we need to detect and find people who are on the flight. Of course, with permission from the airlines,” said Steve Lee, the Chief Information Officer at Changi Airport Group.

He added that they have tested the technology that could allow the airport to do this and that they should have some capability to pull this off in about a year from now.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: facial recognition, _cold