Chinese airline introduces facial recognition for boarding

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Running late for your flight and don’t have time to print out your boarding pass? Your face can now be your ticket if you’re flying on Chinese airlines.

China Southern Airlines has become the country's first carrier to use facial recognition to allow its passengers on board, with the technology put into use on Wednesday at Jiangying Airport in Nanyang City, central China’s Henan Province.

Facial recognition technology is a biometric method using stored record of a person to compare it with their live capture or digital image data with the purpose of identifying them.

The technology is commonly used for security purposes, but its use is widened to include a variety of sectors including gaming and mobile payment.

Digitized facial recognition using grid with specific female points. /VCG Photo

But how can the airline recognize who I am?

First, passengers need to download the airline’s mobile application, and upload a profile picture.

Travelers’ faceprints will be scanned at the security checkpoint after checking in. The system will verify whether the live capture matches the person’s ID photo and the profile picture they uploaded to the app.

When arriving at the boarding gate, the system will scan and verify the passenger’s face again, without the hassle of showing their identification documents, such as an ID or a boarding pass.

Boarding the plane will no longer require long queues as the process will be as fast as the bat of an eye.

"It’s much faster than before. I didn’t have to pull out my ID or boarding pass at the gate while my hands were full of luggage. It feels like magic when the gate just opened as I approached," a passenger surnamed Wang, who has experienced the new service, told carnoc.com, a Chinese civil aviation web portal.

Ready for take-off. /VCG Photo

If passengers fail to pass the digitized verification procedure, ground staff will resort to the traditional way to allow them on board.

"Passengers who have undergone plastic surgeries are likely to be denied by the system at security checkpoints since they might look different from photos on their ID and in the app," an airport staff noted. "Profile pictures need to be timely updated on the app for those who want to try the new service.”

The Baidu Inc. logo is displayed in the company's headquarters in Beijing, China. /VCG Photo

In developing the system, the airline cooperated with China's tech behemoth, Baidu Inc., and GRG Banking, a state-owned financial enterprise.

Huang Wenqiang, general manager of the airline's e-commerce division, told Xinhua News Agency that the smart-boarding system involves multiple encryption measures, which would prevent personal information theft.

The airline will apply the system at a later time at Beijing's new airport and other airports, said Han Wensheng, deputy general manager of China Southern Airlines.

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