Rummaging around for boarding passes and dashing to the airport to check in may soon become a thing of the past. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a UN organization that establishes international airline standards, is to unveil a revolutionary "digital travel credential" that may make check-in and boarding passes obsolete within three years, The Guardian reported.
Rather than getting a paper or electronic boarding pass, travellers would get a constantly updated "journey pass" on their mobile phone when they reserve a flight. The system would also automatically adapt with any changes to the flight plan, and airlines would be informed when a traveller shows up at the airport through facial recognition scans instead of check-in confirmations.
Seamless, secure, and smart: How the new system will work
Passport details will be uploaded to their devices, enabling them to use facial authentication at various airport checks. Improvements in infrastructure—like faster facial recognition and mobile passport scanners—will be needed to enable this transformation, which industry experts describe as the biggest shift in air travel since e-ticketing became widespread in the early 2000s.
Valérie Viale, product management director at travel technology company Amadeus, described the transition as "the biggest in 50 years" and compared the new system to the seamless service consumers expect from businesses such as Amazon. "The industry has now concluded that it's time to move on to contemporary systems," she added.
Privacy and passenger control key to design
Identifying possible privacy issues, Amadeus asserts that its system is designed with stringent data protection safeguards. Individual information will be erased within 15 seconds of every application across any airport point of touch, like entrance gates or security stations.
The system also guarantees more flexibility in the event of delays or disruptions. For example, if a connecting flight is missed because of unexpected delays, passengers would receive new boarding information on their phones automatically, with their journey pass updated accordingly—no more long queues at customer service counters.
Goodbye to old airline systems
Today, airline systems are disjointed, with different platforms for booking, check-in, and boarding. Viale explained that the new system would consolidate these into a "continuous and dynamic" journey experience. "Right now, airlines have systems that are extremely siloed," she said. "In the future, the journey pass will be dynamic."
If rolled out across the world, this technology has the potential to revolutionize the travel experience and cut delays at airports, while ushering in a new age of intelligent, self-service flight.
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