Soon, you will no longer need a boarding pass to board a domestic flight in India! In a bid to provide paperless entry into airports for domestic flights, the government has zeroed in on facial recognition system, which will be used as biometric identification for air passengers. According to a TOI report, this is likely to start at the PPP metro airports namely, Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports, and the four, run by the Airports Authority of India (AAI) – Varanasi, Vijayawada, Kolkata and Pune airports. A source who was quoted in the report said that the process under digiyatra (DY) will be rolled out at the four AAI airports in the next five to six months. The source also informed that the other shortlisted airports will get the system soon thereafter, adding that other airports will follow the same, later on.
According to the source, the facial recognition system was chosen over thumb impressions and iris scan. The least private biometric indicator is the face. While elaborating on the system, the source said that during a scan, the face is divided into thousands of units and then it matches the records are matched. Even if anyone’s forehead is bandaged due to an injury, the system will be still able to match the biometrics. However, the facial picture will be required to be updated every five years or so, the source added.
The new system will be in addition to the current system. Domestic flyers who wish to take up this option will have to register themselves first on an aviation ministry portal by using any ID like Aadhaar, passport or driving license. The facial recognition will be taken on the first visit to the airport, following which the face will be passenger’s ID and ticket on subsequent domestic journeys. Also, the facial data will be kept in a secure manner with common access to airports across the country.
