British Airways Expands Use of Biometric Technology

Three more U.S. airports let travelers have their faces scanned instead of showing travel documents.

British Airways (BA) has expanded its use of biometric technology to gates in Orlando (MCO), Miami (MIA) and New York (JFK). Biometric technology, which identifies people using fingerprints, facial features or other unique physical characteristic, has already been in use on flights from BA’s hub, London Heathrow Airport, and at boarding gates at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

At MCO, BA’s biometric gates remove the need for travelers to present their boarding pass or identification after they’ve passed through security. At the gate, travelers look into a camera to verify their identity then board the plane. So far, this has made the process more efficient, with flights of more than 200 people at MCO boarding in around 10 minutes. At LAX, boarding times have been halved with the new technology.

Whereas BA’s biometric gates at MCO and LAX are used at boarding, JFK and MIA use them for incoming flights from Heathrow so that arriving passengers need not present travel documents or be fingerprinted when they land.

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