Lufthansa Joins LAX Biometric Boarding Trial

Vision-Box‘s biometric boarding trial at the Los Angeles Airport (LAX) has expanded with the addition of Lufthansa to the project’s participants.

The trial got underway toward the end of last year when Vision-Box’s technology was enabled for British Airlines passengers. The system scans passengers’ faces as they approach a departure gate, and securely sends the biometric data to the US Customs and Border Protection agency so that travelers’ faces can be checked against watch lists. The biometric data is also verified against the travelers’ identity documents and the flight manifest, with automated eGates opening for confirmed passengers.

Vision-Box has now announced that the technology was used last week to allow about 350 Lufthansa passengers to board their flight in just 20 minutes, all without requiring them to present identity documents. Commenting on the trial, Lufthansa Product Management Ground and Digital Services Senior Director Bjoern Becker explained that “[t]he increasing need for airlines, airports and authorities to offer faster and more convenient processes for guests to move through the airport creates a unique opportunity for the use of biometrics.” Becker added that Lufthansa expects that biometric boarding will soon be “widely utilized across the U.S. and beyond.”

Indeed, in the US and elsewhere the trend is being driven not only by an air travel industry seeking to accommodate increasing traffic, but by security agencies looking to biometric solutions for securing borders. The CBP’s biometric airport screening efforts have been expanding across the country over the last year, and the agency appears intent on working with the private sector to ensure a broad rollout in the long term.

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March 22, 2018 – by Alex Perala