Emirates became the first airline outside America to receive approval for biometric boarding from the U.S. Customs Border Protection (CBP).
Passengers flying from Dubai to any of Emirates’ 12 destinations in the U.S. will be able to choose facial recognition technology at the departure gates, reducing the time taken for identity checks to two seconds or less. No pre-registration is required, and customers may also choose not to use the technology. Emirates does not store any biometric records of its customers – all the data is managed securely by CBP.
The technology was piloted at the departure gates of Emirates’ flights from Dubai to New York and Los Angeles through the peak periods in July 2019 and August 2019. The results were encouraging with some flights achieving 100% biometric boarding and zero manual checks. The airline expects to make biometric boarding available for all its U.S. destinations by year-end, once the equipment is in place.
Source: Emirates