Passengers travelling from Heathrow will be able to check in and board their flight without showing a passport from this summer. A £50 million project to install permanent facial recognition technology at Britain’s biggest airport is intended to reduce time spent passing through by up to a third as travellers will not need to show a boarding pass either. It is the biggest single deployment of biometric technology in the world. Gatwick confirmed yesterday that it would run a second trial of facial recognition technology next month. British Airways has said that its own shift towards biometric boarding in the United States has allowed it to reduce boarding times by half. The surveillance camera commissioner is seeking more robust regulation of the technology. Heathrow’s system
London’s Heathrow Airport is undertaking the world’s biggest single deployment of biometric technology, installing a permanent £50m ($65m) facial-recognition system that will enable departing passengers to pass through every stage of the airport without needing to show passports or boarding passes. The system, which has been in operation since last year, uses facial scans and iris scans, as well as fingerprint scanners, to identify people entering the terminal at Heathrow.