Face Recognition Technology To Soon Be a Reality At Indian Airports!

Indian flyers will soon be able to leave their identification cards and boarding passes at home!

By February 2019, airport authorities will roll out facial recognition-based access system at various Indian Airports to make air travel more streamlined and paperless.

Hyderabad and Bangalore airport will start with Biometric based facial entry by February end, while airports in Varanasi, Kolkata, Pune and Vijayawada will get this technology by April 2019.

According to Aviation Secretary, R.N. Choubey, these airports will be the first airports in India to have this system. If it’s a success they will look to implement this technology at other airports across India.

After these six, India’s biggest hubs of Delhi and Mumbai and then other Airports Authority of India (AAI) run Indian Airports will get the system under which paperless boarding of domestic flights will be a reality.

Passengers on domestic flights will be able to choose whether they want to use the biometric authentication system and go paperless. They will have to generate a unique Digi Yatra(DY) ID by registering at the aviation ministry portal and give the details required.

After this, DY ID will verify the identity using face recognition. Once confirmed, e-gates will open and allow domestic passengers access to various points such as terminal entry point, entry to security check and aircraft boarding.

Here are the benefits of this initiative:

• Airports will know what was the last point cleared by a flyer in case the airline needs to search for a passenger.
• It will accelerate the passenger’s airport journey
• Will reduce costs and airfares as lesser manpower deployment will be required for verifying ID’s
• The system has the capability of reducing long queues

India has witnessed a six-fold increase in passenger numbers over the past decade as citizens take advantage of better connectivity and cheaper fares thanks to a host of low-cost airlines.

Hopefully, with the implementation of this system, airports will be able to tackle the problem of congestion and long ques, especially during peak hours and make a passengers airport trip much smoother.