Fort Lauderdale Hollywood Airport (FLL) has introduced biometric boarding.
The new facial recognition boarding system can now be used by Spirit Airlines passengers at 14 of their departure gates in Terminal 4.
Biometric boarding is is available for all international flights from FLL but to start with it is just Spirit.
Using facial recognition means that passengers departing from Fort Lauderdale can now scan their face instead of scanning a boarding pass.
Biometric boarding is also touchless. During the boarding process the passenger biometrics are verified with CBP, the passenger booking and the Departure Control System (DCS) system.
How it works
At the departure gate the passenger stands in front of a high-resolution 3D camera contained in a unit called a Biopod. This captures the live image of the passenger.
The live image is then matched against the images stored by the CBP.
If the passenger is successfully verified a message is sent to the airline systems so that the passenger can be ‘boarded’ by them.
Spirit goes self-service and biometric
In September, Spirit started using a new check-in system at New York’s LaGuardia Airport (LGA) and Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD) that uses increased self-service and biometrics.
Passengers use self-service to check-in, print and tag bags and a self-service bag drop which uses facial recognition biometrics.
Supplier
The kiosks/Biopods are from Australian company ICM Airport Technics.
The self bag drop kiosks come from German based Materna.
N.B. Image credit: Spirit Airlines
