Brazilian Airports Extend Contactless Screening Program to Airline Employees

Airport operators in Brazil are expanding the scope of the country’s Safer Boarding program. The federal government first introduced the program at the Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Janeiro in March of this year, and has since conducted passenger boarding trials at several airports throughout the country.

Now the government is extending the utility from passengers to airline employees. The Safer Boarding platform is developed by Serpro, and uses facial recognition to enable contactless identity verification at the airport. Passengers can submit to a facial recognition scan when they board their plane, while airline employees will be able to use facial recognition at boarding and to enter restricted areas like the staff lounge.

For the moment, the biometric screening option will only be available to employees at domestic airports in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and only to pilots and flight attendants representing the Azul, Gol, and Latam airlines. However, the government is eventually hoping to move forward with the full launch of the Safer Boarding program at all Brazilian airports sometime in 2022.

The Serpro system is backed by Brazil’s Ministry of Infrastructure and the Special Secretariat for Management and Digital Government of the Ministry of Economy. The agencies are hoping that the system will make airport operations more efficient and minimize the amount of physical contact between passengers, pilots, and airport staff.

The airline employees in the newest trial will be matched to images stored in the crew ID database. Those employees have traditionally needed to present physical ID cards at security checkpoints and will no longer need to do so, though they will still be required to go through the standard airport security inspection. Airlines have also rolled out digital crew IDs in the leadup to the facial recognition trial.

The São Paulo trial will run for an initial two-week period that comes with an option to extend. Those who cannot be verified with facial recognition will need to complete a manual identity verification process. Roughly 5,000 passengers have been screened in prior trial stages, while the trial itself is realized with the help of IDEMIA’s MFace facial recognition tech.

Source: ZDnet

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November 30, 2021 – by Eric Weiss