The Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) has just launched the ‘Early Go Live’ of its ambitious Digi Yatra project, a fully biometric based self-boarding solution. Vistara airline passengers gets the first chance to experience this by seamlessly breezing through the airport from registration to boarding.
But this is just the beginning. After the final phase of Digi Yatra is complete, over 350 passenger touchpoints will have this system installed in the airport’s Terminal-1. This will be largest deployment of end-to-end paperless biometric programme in Asia.
First to experience this new facility will be passengers travelling on Vistara flight UK864 from Bengaluru to Mumbai. They will not need to present travel documents at every touch point. To take this forward, Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) partnered with Vistara to launch the Vision-Box, developed and installed One-ID biometric platform technology.
How it works:
Before entering the Terminal, passengers can simply enroll their ID and biometric data, combined with their flight details. As they travel through the airport, they can put their travel documents away. The biometric technology will authenticate and verify their documents at every touch point.
Dispelling doubts of privacy, BIAL informs: “This process offers the highest degree of safety and security while ensuring stringent standards of privacy. The biometric data is used only for authentication and verification to assist the boarding process and not for recognition. Passenger data is deleted within a few hours of flight completion.”
Vistara’s Departure Control System (DCS) was integrated with the technology. This now allows effortless processing at the entry to the terminal, passenger security screening and the boarding gate. “All Vistara flights are expected to be integrated into the biometric boarding process at KIA by October 2019,” a BIAL statement said.
Over the next few months, this process is to be integrated with check-in / self-bag-drop to include other domestic and international airlines at the airport. In the final stage, this technology will be integrated with the Digi Yatra Central Platform, currently being architectured by the Digi Yatra Foundation.
In Terminal-2 too
“Once we trial the full end-to-end process successfully and integrate it into the Digi Yatra Platform, the technology and process will be used extensively for seamless flow in our upcoming Terminal 2 Project as well,” said Hari Marar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, BIAL.
The project is a step towards eventually implementing the country’s first all-biometric flow operation where the passenger’s face will be his / her boarding pass.