In this post, we will bring you the insider news on what is coming down the line regarding biometrics and IATA One ID, read on below to catch up with the latest closed-door developments.
This year’s agenda was mainly focused on discussing and addressing potential challenges in the future of passenger facilitation. IATA expects passenger volumes to double over the next 20 years while planned airport expansions will lag behind, straining already overcrowded airport capacities and putting greater emphasis on making passenger facilitation more efficient. The main way of achieving this increased efficiency lies in pushing passenger operations out of the airport as much as possible, through a combination of offering better passenger self-service and smarter airport infrastructure. Both of these methods inherently rely on more widespread adoption of biometrics as an integral part of the passenger booking and boarding process.
Frederic Leger, IATA Director for APCS Products, shared some key insights from the latest Airsat survey regarding passenger self-service and biometrics. Passenger support for self-service check-in has been steadily on the rise and is now the preferred method for more than half of the respondents, while the support for using biometrics in place of physical travel documents has been relatively slower on the uptake and still lacks an absolute majority. Biometrics seem to be faring better on the airport side with e-gates: The system relies on both the passenger’s physical passport as well as their facial biometrics to enable automated processing, and a vast majority of surveyed passengers responded positively to the implementation of such e-gates with the main deciding factor being significant time savings.
Hitit believes the key takeaway here is that airlines still have some time to formulate their own biometrics approach and implementation strategy and should focus their short-term efforts on improving their web and mobile app channels, with the caveat that they should also start thinking about biometrics sooner rather than later.
The Forum also hosted several workshop sessions with different subgroups working together to identify critical challenges airlines will face when adopting to this vision of the future, and potential IATA initiatives that can help alleviate them. Based on the session outcomes the first and foremost is the proper management of passenger biometrics: Airlines have well-founded concerns about collecting, storing and processing such highly sensitive pieces of data, and they are looking to governments or industry organizations such as IATA to step up to set up the proper procedures and regulations. IATA’s One ID initiative, which Hitit has been involved with since its earliest stages, will likely play a crucial role in addressing this need. Also high on the list are ways to automatically process passports, visas, and other passenger travel documents during booking, for example by using visual recognition via a mobile app, better disruption handling by being cognizant of visa requirements and other travel restrictions for possible reroutings, and finally improvements on the scope and quality of the data included in 2D barcodes on boarding passes – such as encoding travel document or visa information in the boarding pass to be re-used by other systems throughout the passenger journey as needed.
Hitit’s key takeaway for these sessions has been that airlines -and their PSS providers much more so- will need to keep a close eye on IATA initiatives such as One ID as well as ICAO NTWG developments. Hitit will be doing its part by continuing to be actively involved in the development of such new initiatives and adopting their Crane solutions to keep ahead of any coming changes comfortably in advance.