The future of travel: approach the gate, scan your face, board the aircraft. This is not some dystopian world or sci-fi movie. This is how Lufthansa is now boarding flights at Los Angeles International Airport.
Lufthansa has rolled out biometric boarding at LAX and early reports indicate great success. Conde Nast reports:
All passengers need to do is approach the self-boarding gate right right before boarding the plane and pause: Within seconds, facial scans are sent in real-time to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for verification, and if all goes as planned, a passenger is recognized as “boarded” and can proceed down the jet bridge. Following the trial, the airline says it will roll out biometric boarding at other airports around the country. So long, pesky boarding passes!
British Airways has already been testing this at LAX. Qantas and Korean Air are not far behind. Meanwhile, in Atlanta Delta is also trialing biometric boarding, as is JetBlue in Boston.
Don’t expect this to fully replace the need for paper or mobile boarding passes, however. These will still be necessary to clear TSA checkpoints since the TSA doesn’t have a database of all driver’s licenses and passports. At least not yet…
CONCLUSION
Biometric boarding procedure gives a whole new meaning to “ticketless travel”. Have you experienced biometric boarding yet?
top image: British Airways
Getting past the gate barrier may be considered having been boarded but it doesn’t mean everyone has settled into their seats or there aren’t dozens (or hundreds) still lined up on the jet bridge while aisles inside the plane are blocked by those fiddling while stuffing their over-sized bags into the overhead holds unconcerned about letting people pass further down the plane,
WIll boarding pass still be supported as a secondary option?
I mean some people might have partially covered face (injury,operation,etc).
When I used this system a couple of weeks at LAX, on a SAS flight, they had a manned gate to one side for *G and wheelchair pax who scan their app/boarding pass as normal.
I can in no way see this happening at FRA. LH now designed most of their USA gates so pax need to walk down a flight of steps to board. They have an elevator but usually turn it off, they also usually turn off the single escalator for safety concerns. So, let’s revisit this scenario. 400+pax, one staircase, carry on bags?
SAS was doing this a couple of weeks when I flew LAX-ARN.
Why can’t we use these e-gates at (entry) immigration like all of Europe and many other countries are doing? It takes me literally 10 seconds to enter an EU country with my EU passport, even an EU member state that is not my own.
I’ve seen this in Norway and Sweden, both of which have high labor costs. Even the security checkpoints here are automated. The same at London-Heathrow.
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JL opens their gates on domestic flights generally 20-30 minutes prior departure. A 777 with 500 seats is boarded in 10 to 15 minutes and pushes back from the gate on time with everyone settled in. No fancy boarding technologies.