Soon, passengers will have a unique facility of paperlessboarding pass in the six airports of the country. India is planning to installan advanced facial recognition system in Kolkata, Varanasi, Pune, Vijayawada,Bangalore, and Hyderabad.
With this new system, people traveling on-air won’t berequiring any boarding pass or identity proof. Their face will be theirboarding pass and identity proof as well. According to sources, paperlessboarding will first start at Varanasi Airport and will be implemented within amonth. Kolkata Airport has also announced that it will start the facerecognition trials soon.
The Ministry of Aviation has stated that the preparations tointroduce the new technology at airports are underway. The security systemswill also strengthen after the launch of the same. The scheme under which thesystem is being installed is called ‘Digi Yatra’.
Earlier the scheme went under trial on September 6, 2020, atTerminal 3 of Delhi Airport. For now, the work of ‘Digi Yatra’ is underway inBanglore and Mumbai airports and soon will be starting at Kolkata airport. Thesame system was trialed in Hyderabad airport in 2019.
What is ‘Digi Yatra’ and its benefits
It is a governmental scheme to ensure security at airportsby using high-tech body scanners and facial recognition systems. Passengerswill register themselves and will be provided with a Digi Travel ID. Once thedata is stored in the system, you can book the tickets from this ID.
Explaining the advantages of this technology in Lok Sabha inMarch 2021, the government said that it will make the whole process paperless.The fast processing will save time and passengers won’t have to wait in longlines. The facial recognition system will strengthen security as airports willhave authentic information about the passenger.
Relevance of facial recognition in pandemic
Dubai Airport has already started the use ofthis technology. During processing, the passengers just have to look at thecamera at different gates for five minutes. During the examination, peoplewearing masks and goggles have to remove them as the technology is not thisadvanced yet.