One vital traveling essential may become obsolete.
The aviation industry is planning its biggest shake-up in 50 years — and part of the major overhaul means no more boarding passes or checking in for flights.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the United Nations body that oversees many aspects of aviation, is getting rid of the existing rules for airports and airlines and instead creating a “digital travel credential,” The UK Times reported.
With the new policy, passengers can upload their passports and passport information to their phones and move through airports using just their face for identification.
The form of verification will be available within “two to three years,” and checking in for flights online or at the airport will become a thing of the past.
“These changes are the biggest in 50 years,” Valérie Viale, director of product management at Amadeus, the world’s largest travel technology company, told The Times. “Many airline systems haven’t changed for more than 50 years because everything has to be consistent across the industry and interoperable.
Currently, air travelers are required to check in for their flight either online or once they get to the airport, where they receive a boarding pass with a barcode that is scanned at security and the gate before boarding.
Under the new plan, travelers will be issued a “journey pass” on their phones when a flight is booked, which will automatically update if any changes are made to the booking. The pass will also contain all passport details.
With no check-in, a passenger’s face will be scanned when they arrive at the airport, alerting the airline of their intention to fly. That will occur at the bag drop-off for those checking luggage, and for those with just a carry-on, it will happen at security checkpoints.
Flyers would then board the aircraft simply with biometric data since their passport will be in their journey pass. They would be able to go through the airport without pulling out their passport or phones.
“The last upgrade of great scale was the adoption of e-ticketing in the early 2000s. The industry has now decided it’s time to upgrade to modern systems that are more like what Amazon would use,” Viale said.
The physical infrastructure of airports will have to be updated for the plan to work. Digital travel credentials would require airports to have facial recognition technology as well as the ability to read a passport from a mobile device.
Notably, The Times reported that the infrastructure in airports would only verify that your face matches your passport — there would be no storing of information, removing the risk of data breaches. Travel site One Mile at a Time said that a system has been developed to wipe passenger details within 15 seconds of contact at a “touchpoint.”
This is supposed to be just the beginning of the use of the new tech.
The idea is that if someone misconnects on a flight or a flight gets changed or canceled, their updated flight information would automatically be sent to them, and they won’t need to check in for the new flight — they can just go straight to the gate and board the plane.
The experts at One Mile at a Time said that their main skepticism with the process is the two-to-three-year timeline.
“There’s no denying that this could happen, and that the technology is there for this to become a reality. The question is just about the timeline, given the scale of this project,” they wrote.
