Berlin Brandenburg Airport Introduces Facial Recognition

Berlin Brandenburg Airport introduces BER Traveller – a digital service that allows biometric access control.

Lufthansa Group Airlines Lufthansa and SWISS as well as Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Eurowings and HON Circle members and senators of Eurowings and Eurowings will be able to use the new service immediately at BER. Prior to this, they had to present their boarding passes to access the priority security control lane. No longer is this necessary. These passengers can now access the priority security check via a separate lane, using facial recognition. It is convenient and easy. Only a single registration of biometric data is required in the FastID app by the service provider. The airline will send an email invitation to the passengers.

In a joint venture, the Lufthansa group and BER have developed a new digital service for passengers. The service will initially be available exclusively to HON Circle members and Senators of Lufthansa Group Airlines. Next, the self-service machines at BER will allow for boarding and accessing the Lufthansa group lounge via facial recognition.

Heike Birlenbach is the Head of Customer Experience at Lufthansa Group."We are improving our passengers travel experience in the long-term through contactless, biometric services since they make airport processes simpler and more efficient. I am pleased that we can now also offer this innovative service to our HON Circle Members and Senators in Berlin. Our customers greatly appreciate this new service at all locations where biometric checks have already been introduced."

Thomas Hoff Anderson is Chief Operations Officer at Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH. He says: "We are pleased to have persuaded the Lufthansa Group, one of our most important customers, of the great potential of facial recognition for smarter passenger processes at BER. This is a good basis for being able to offer the new "BER Traveller" product to other airlines' passengers as well. FastID is the right partner to help us make departures from BER faster and easier thanks to the opportunities offered by digital facial recognition."

Use of the new biometric services is entirely voluntary. The app stores biometric and personal data decentrally. The app allows passengers to decide before every flight whether they wish to use the service. The data (flight information and biometric identifiers), as well as the photos taken at the airport, will only be sent in encrypted form and compared with FastID after this point. The data will be deleted from FastID after the flight and remain in the app of the passenger. The data is completely under the control of the passenger and they can delete the entire app at any time.

FastID verifies the passengers at the processing points by using cameras permanently installed at the points of service and matching their biometric data (facial recognition), which is obtained from the app.

Albert van Veen is the Managing Director at FastID. "The implementation at BER Airport represents a new era of identity control in travel - an era that is fully decentralised and gives individuals control over their own data. With FastID, BER Airport has given passengers the option of taking back responsibility for their journey, offering biometric identification for faster and smoother travel. FastID puts the passenger at the centre of the journey, enabling a fully convenient and safe experience."

Source: breakingtravelnews.com