Boarding Passes and pass checks could soon be replaced by selfies as announced by prominent US airline JetBlue. The airline has established a partnership with the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for self-boarding ease and streamline airport checks. Passengers can choose their own photographs, and by using biometric data and facial recognition technology, the photograph will be matched with a passport, visa or immigration photograph of the person from the CBP database.
Easy and smooth boarding check
According to vice-president of JetBlue, self boarding with selfies can reduce friction at the airport because the boarding process with passes can be a bit manual and the autoboarding process with selfies excludes the analysis of boarding passes and manual checks of passports.
Just a look at the camera, a click and the boarding check is done automatically. The details of the flight will be checked in the database, and passengers will receive notification on screen when they are allowed to continue. JetBlue stated that crew members would be given Ipad Minis, which they can use to interact with the passengers in the new process.
In the past year, JetBlue also recently issued self-service kiosks, which allowed marking and dropping of luggage to improve airport efficiency. Delta airlines recently mentioned about starting testing biometric technology on luggage handling machines. The technology also uses facial recognition to map passengers to their photographs on the passport.
The JetBlue program will start this month from a JetBlue flight to Queen Beatrix International Airport in Aruba island in the Caribbean from the Logan International Airport in Boston.
Biometric facial recognition and not paper documents
The biometric selfie boarding program by JetBlue in alliance with CBP is designed for simplicity of use and offers a safe and transparent experience for passengers, according to Jim Peters of SITA.
The use of modern technologies to enable the use of biometric controls, as well as CBP's permission to easily redirect to airline systems can come as boon to passenger checks at airports. This is the first integration in CBP of biometric authorization with an airline and can be a solution that can be quickly and easily deployed at U.S.
airports. Biometric facial recognition is set to outdate passport and boarding pass checks at airports as JetBlue becomes the first airline to connect to CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Patrol) with technology to undertake the process.
In a simple process, the person takes a selfie with camera and the image is sent to CBP, where it will be matched with a ID photo like passport, visa, or immigration document. The selfie system eliminates the need for paper boarding passes and is probably easier and cooler than people verifying identity on boarding pass and ID documents.
