Friday, August 23, 2024 As U.S. airports grapple with long lines at TSA checkpoints during the end-of-summer travel rush, Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi is making strides towards a seamless passenger journey.
By 2025, the airport’s ambitious Smart Travel Project will integrate biometric sensors at every identification checkpoint, ushering in a new era of travel efficiency and security. “They are boldly moving forward in adopting facial recognition as the means to let travelers into their system, and I commend them for doing it,” said Sheldon Jacobson, an engineering and computer science professor at the University of Illinois. Jacobson has been studying airport security since the 1990s and helped the TSA develop its pre-screening program, which allows some travelers in the U.
S. to skip the checkpoints. “Facial recognition is the future, and we will start to get intelligent with airport security and focus on the traveler rather than the items they bring.
By doing that, you create a different paradigm,” Jacobson said. “What they are doing in Abu Dhabi is just the beginning, but it has to start somewhere.” Going completely paperless from the parking garage to your seat-back tray table is unnerving to some who wonder if a could bring down fully electronic boarding systems and grind travel to a halt.
But Jacobson says those are very rare events, and even if the system completely shut down because of an outage, the net benefits of a biometric travel experience over time will outweigh the costs. Zayed International Airport’s program relies on a partnership with the government. The UAE’s Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs & Port Security collects biometrics from any traveler arriving in the UAE for the first time.
The airport then uses this database to verify passengers passing checkpoints. The airport did not respond to a request for comment on its plans. Saeed Saif Al Khaili, General Director at the United Arab Emirate’s Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs, and Port Security, that the Biometric Smart Travel project “aims to enhance the travel experience at Zayed International Airport from curb to gate, ensuring high levels of security and safety.
” Jacobson says the TSA tends to move more slowly and incrementally on changes, and that the UAE’s political system allows for faster implementation of programs, so this all-encompassing collection of biometric data likely wouldn’t fly in the U.S., at least not now.
Whenever new biometric programs are introduced, he said, there is “tremendous pushback.”.
