Paris Airport Studies Facial Software to Cut Security Wait Times

Paris Airport Studies Facial Software to Cut Security Wait Times
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Groupe ADP, the operator of Paris’s airports, has begun testing new face-recognition software at Charles de Gaulle airport to speed passengers through immigration faster after terrorist attacks on the capital doubled delays amid tighter security, according to Bloomberg.

The new software is from Vision-Box, a closely held company in Portugal, and Morpho Detection, a unit of Safran now being sold to Smiths Group. Following the attacks in Paris and Nice in 2015 and 2016, the state required computer records of every passenger passing border control. That doubled the number of passengers exposed to waits of as much as an extra hour to get through controls, ADP said.

The move comes as airports worldwide are rushing to tap digital technologies, including biometric recognition, to speed passengers through airports, where delays are generally far more punishing than ones in the air. The only speedy pass-through available at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle and Orly Airports now is Parafe, an automated system for French citizens that scans their biometric passports and fingerprints. Only 3 percent of people passing through Charles de Gaulle use Parafe, which has been in use since 2009.

The Vision-Box software will check passport images with people’s faces from all 28 European Union countries. If trials go well and the French state signs off on use of the software, the number of people going biometrics to speed passage could climb to as much as 20 percent of the average 180,000 people passing through daily, said Franck Goldnadel, chief airport operations officer, in an interview.

KLM has just begun a three month trial to use face-scanning technology at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. In Japan the government last year invested to install facial recognition systems at airports nationwide. And in the U.S., biometric screening firm Clear is expanding to 22 major airports. Clear charges travelers $170 a year to enroll, whereas the French system would be free.