Airline sector wants to retire passport and adopt AI – 02/06/2023 – Market

A paper passport, full of stamps, should become a thing of the past, plan the entities that control the rules of the global airline industry.

The industry is looking for ways to digitize traveler identification to save time at airports and thus reduce costs and increase security.

Today, each country issues its paper passport, which has a chip to facilitate machine reading. Most of the time, border agents check the document manually. The booklet also contains visas, required for entry into some countries, such as the United States and Brazil.

The idea is that these data, instead of being marked on letterhead, are saved in digital format. With this, the user will be able to send the information and obtain the approval to travel even before leaving home, as is already done with the check-in. With a few taps on the cell phone, the trip is confirmed and a code is generated to be shown at the entrance to the plane.

“It is urgent to remove the paper and move towards the model that we call ‘ready to fly’: the person arrives at the airport and is ready to travel. The airport becomes a crossing point, and no longer a control point. The idea is that most of the steps are done before arriving at the terminal”, says Filipe Reis, director of airports, passengers, cargo and security at IATA in the Americas.

IATA (Association of Air Transport Companies) and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) work together to define the rules for international flights and standardize procedures.

“Paper is no longer useful. It is not sustainable in terms of volume or security. Counterfeiting evolves all the time. And companies don’t want paper because it delays processes and that generates costs”, says Reis.

The project, run by Iata and Icao to modify the current passport, is called One Id. It envisages the creation of a single digital file model capable of storing passenger identification and that can be read by all countries. In addition to identity data, the digital file would bring visas, vaccines taken and biometric data of travelers.

The passport could work as a virtual approach card, except in digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay: when the traveler needs to show his data, he would grant access through a password, on his own device, to a border agent , for example.

However, the transition could go one step further: instead of presenting a bar code or virtual card, the passenger’s own face would become the boarding pass. And the passport.

It would work like this: each traveler would have a virtual passport. Before taking a trip, the person would send his data to the airline and to the authorities of the country of destination. This “package” would include biometric data, such as your fingerprints or face shape.

The governments of the two countries involved in the trip would then do an advance check. With the departure of one country and the entry into another approved, there would be no need to queue at the airports: upon arriving at the destination, the passenger would leave the plane, undergo a facial check and be able to go out into the street without speaking to anyone.

At Brazilian airports, such as Guarulhos, there is already self-service equipment at the border control: Brazilians scan their passport, then look at a camera and, once facial recognition is confirmed, they can continue their journey.

“For us to be able to move forward, the challenge is not technology. What is needed most is to develop trust between states”, points out Reis. “All the more than 200 associated countries have the right to participate in the debate.”

Discussions have been going on for more than ten years, and there is no deadline for starting implementation. “It’s a slow process. I say it should take another decade, but maybe I’m being optimistic. However, in the coming years we should already have a certain volume, often bilaterally”, says Reis.

Some countries do tests, like Canada and the Netherlands. In this pilot, passengers will have their biometric data checked in Canada, which will transfer the approval list to the Dutch government. Upon arriving in the European country, travelers will be able to disembark without going through controls, as if it were a domestic flight.

Another test of information exchange is being carried out between Norway and Croatia. Next should come multilateral evidence, such as blocks of neighboring countries facilitating travel within the same region. The expectation is that the experiments will help to see if the idea works in practice and how to improve it.

Reis estimates that the transition will cost a few billion dollars, and says that there is still debate about who will pay for it: governments will have to adopt new systems and equipment, as will companies. Airports will also need to make physical adjustments.

“The technology gains scale very quickly and prices are going down. Biometric cameras used to cost thousands of dollars, today they are costing hundreds and in the future they could cost tens of dollars”, he points out.

On the other hand, facial recognition technology is still the subject of questions: it tends to fail more with black, Asian and other ethnicities, as the databases used to train it are often based on white people, recalls Bárbara Simão , coordinator of InternetLab’s privacy and surveillance area.

“She also tends to make more mistakes with children and the elderly, who are in a phase of growth and change in features”, he points out. “Even if the chance of error is 0.1%, if it is used by millions of people, chances are that a lot of people will be affected.”

Another concern is how the governance of user data will be carried out: a leak in the databases with passenger biometrics could have serious consequences.

Reis says that the project is being structured in order to respect data protection laws adopted around the world, such as the Brazilian LGPD. Thus, companies and governments would undertake to capture the minimum amount of information necessary and to dispose of them after a certain period.

With this, the government of a country could keep a list with the names of people who visited its territory, but not their biometric data, for example.

The creation of a global database is not foreseen: each country would keep the information of the citizens of their countries, as it is today. And it would be up to passengers to authorize, each time, the sharing of their information to airlines, airports and the country of destination.

The project also foresees that there will always be alternatives for those who do not want or cannot use biometric data to identify themselves when traveling.