Facial recognition replaces boarding pass at this German airport

BERLIN - Germany's famous Berlin Brandenburg Airport is introducing a digital service for bio metric access control allowing Lufthansa Group Airlines to avail the service. 

Under the new service, Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings’ HON Circle Members and Senators can have fast access to the priority security control via a separate lane using facial recognition.  

Previously passengers had to show their boarding pass to get to the security control’s priority lane but that is no longer necessary. The only requirement to be met is one-time registration of biometric data in the service provider’s app, FastID.

The Lufthansa Group and BER are joining hands for multiple digital services for passengers. The current service is initially aimed exclusively at Lufthansa Group Airlines’ HON Circle Members and Senators. The next step will be putting in place BER’s self-service machines, boarding at the gate and access to the Lufthansa Group Lounge possible via facial recognition.

Heike Birlenbach, Head of Customer Experience Lufthansa Group said the airline was improving passengers travel experience in the long-term through contactless, bio metric services since they make airport processes simpler and more efficient.

 ‘I am pleased that we can now also offer this innovative service to our HON Circle Members and Senators in Berlin. Our customers greatly appreciate this new service at all locations where bio metric checks have already been introduced.’

Meanwhile, Thomas Hoff Anderson, Chief Operations Officer, Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH, said they were pleased to have persuaded the Lufthansa Group, one of the most important customers, of the great potential of facial recognition for smarter passenger processes at BER. 

‘This is a good basis for being able to offer the new BER Traveller product to other airlines’ passengers as well. FastID is the right partner to help us make departures from BER faster and easier thanks to the opportunities offered by digital facial recognition,’ he said.

It merits mentioning that the use of the new bio metric service is voluntary and personal and bio metric data is stored in a decentralized fashion in the passenger’s app.

As per the guidelines, passengers who have registered in the app decide again before each journey whether they want to use the service for the next flight after which the data (flight data and biometric identifiers) and the photos taken later at the airport will be transmitted in encrypted form to FastID for comparison. 

Moreover, after the flight, the data is deleted from FastID and remains solely in the passenger’s app. Interestingly, passengers have full control over the data in the app and can delete it completely at any time.