Air France-KLM will be swapping boarding passes for facial recognition on Air France flights flying out of the John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City and the George Bush International Airport in Houston. This will be done on a trial basis initially as Air France-KLM sets about to bring facial recognition to all gateways in the United States by next year.
It’s far from the first company to try out biometric boarding. JetBlue started trials two years ago while British Airways has its own trial underway. Biometric boarding is also being used overseas, by Qantas in Australia for example, while the Dubai International Airport has been scanning passengers’ faces when they pass through a tunnel that has 80 facial recognition and iris scanning cameras.
The initial Air France-KLM trial will see more than 2,200 passengers using biometric boarding daily. The company has already been using biometric boarding in some other cities across the United States. They include Los Angeles, Atlanta, Detroit, Dallas, San Francisco, and Seattle.
“We are excited to embrace an innovation that has the potential to make the travel experience less stressful and more secure for our passengers,” said Stephane Ormand, Air France-KLM USA vice president, adding that the company’s goal is to have biometric boarding in place at 93 percent of all U.S. airports by the end of this year and 100 percent by 2020.