News

Berlin airport pilots new customer facial recognition services

18 May 2023 by Mark Caswell
The new BER Traveller biometric service at Berlin airport (image from https://www.lufthansagroup.com/en/newsroom.html)

Berlin Brandenburg airport and Lufthansa Group are rolling out new biometric services which they say will replace the need to show boarding passes at various stages of the airport journey.

The BER Traveller initiative has initially enabled Lufthansa Group HON Circle and Senator members to access priority security lanes through facial recognition rather than the usual presenting of a valid boarding pass.

To avail of the service eligible members must complete a one-time registration of their biometric data via the FastID app,

Lufthansa said that personal and biometric data is stored decentrally in the passenger’s app, and users will be able to decide before each journey whether they want to use the service for their next flight.

Flight data and biometric identifiers will then be transmitted in encrypted form to FastID, along with photos taken at the airport for comparison. Data is deleted from FastID after the flight.

The new BER Traveller biometric service at Berlin airport (image from https://www.lufthansagroup.com/en/newsroom.html)

The aim is for the service to be expanded to cover the use of self-service machines, as well as gate boarding and access to lounges.

Commenting on the news Thomas Hoff Anderson, chief operations officer, Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH, said:

“We are pleased to have persuaded the Lufthansa Group, one of our 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.”

berlin-airport.de, lufthansagroup.com

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