Soon, passengers will have a unique facility of paperless boarding pass in the six airports of the country. India is planning to install an advanced facial recognition system in Kolkata, Varanasi, Pune, Vijayawada, Bangalore, and Hyderabad.
With this new system, people traveling on-air won’t be requiring any boarding pass or identity proof. Their face will be their boarding pass and identity proof as well. According to sources, paperless boarding will first start at Varanasi Airport and will be implemented within a month. Kolkata Airport has also announced that it will start the face recognition trials soon.
The Ministry of Aviation has stated that the preparations to introduce the new technology at airports are underway. The security systems will also strengthen after the launch of the same. The scheme under which the system is being installed is called ‘Digi Yatra’.
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Earlier the scheme went under trial on September 6, 2020, at Terminal 3 of Delhi Airport. For now, the work of ‘Digi Yatra’ is underway in Banglore and Mumbai airports and soon will be starting at Kolkata airport. The same system was trialed in Hyderabad airport in 2019.
What is ‘Digi Yatra’ and its benefits
It is a governmental scheme to ensure security at airports by using high-tech body scanners and facial recognition systems. Passengers will register themselves and will be provided with a Digi Travel ID. Once the data is stored in the system, you can book the tickets from this ID.
Explaining the advantages of this technology in Lok Sabha in March 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 long lines. The facial recognition system will strengthen security as airports will have authentic information about the passenger.
Relevance of facial recognition in pandemic
Dubai Airport has already started the use of
this technology. During processing, the passengers just have to look at the
camera at different gates for five minutes. During the examination, people
wearing masks and goggles have to remove them as the technology is not this
advanced yet.