For passengers embarking from the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) in the next few months, their faces will be their boarding passes.
The face recognition technology, which is part of the Ministry of Civil Aviation’s Digi Yatra programme, will be rolled out at KIA in the third quarter (Q3) of this year making it the first airport in the country to have this technology.
Officials involved in the programme have recently completed a crucial trial to roll out the project soon.
“The Digi Yatra biometric boarding system at the KIA is currently work in progress. Field Acceptance Trials have been conducted at the end of March and production of the hardware has begun,” a BIAL spokesperson told Bangalore Mirror.
With the Field Acceptance Trials done with, officials are confident that a phased rollout of the Digi Yatra would begin in Q3 2019.
“Based on current timelines, we expect that trials and phased rollout of the Digi Yatra central identity management platform to begin at the BLR Airport in Q3 2019.
Once the central platform is set up, BIAL will integrate the biometric boarding system of the Airport with the platform,” the spokesperson added.
The Digi Yatra, which is expected to offer seamless journey to the passengers, will provide them access to walk through security scanners swiftly owing to advanced biometric security solutions.
Under the Digi Yatra programme, the Ministry apart from KIA will also be implementing this technology in other airports in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad.
However, KIA is hopeful that it would be the first in the country to roll out the Digi Yatra programme and in this regard Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) the operators of the airport have signed an agreement with Portugal-based Vision-Box to launch paperless biometric self-boarding technology.
Vision-Box was chosen after BIAL issued a Request For Proposal (RFP) to vendors to implement the paperless biometric self-boarding technology at KIA.
While announcing the signing of the agreement, BIAL has said that the Jet Airways, Air Asia and SpiceJet passengers would be the first users at KIA.
However, now it has to be seen which airline will replace Jet Airways that has stopped its flight operations earlier this month.
