AirAsia unveiled its Fast Airport Clearance Experience System (FACES), thus becoming the first airline in Malaysia to launch an airport facial recognition system.
The system comes with a self-boarding gate, at Senai International Airport, Johor Bahru.
The low-cost airline said it is the first airline in Asia to have a seamless travel experience from check-in to boarding with the latest biometric facial recognition technology, the Worldfuture TV (WFTV) reported on Feb 6.
It eliminates the need of showing boarding pass and ID at the departure gate and will enable passengers to board their flight faster.
With its automated boarding gate, the entire process of boarding about 180 passengers will take between 9-11 minutes instead of 11-13 minutes with the current process. It’s slightly faster and it matters a lot for an airline like AirAsia which has a turnaround of just 25 minutes.
The automated gate system uses Gunnebo’s solution and the facial recognition system is believed to have a success rate of 80%.
At the moment, FACES will only work with adults aged 18 and above. For other passengers including those travelling with infants or those requiring additional assistance would need to go through the standard security screening and boarding process.
Unfortunately, younger passengers aged below 18 years old are not permitted as their facial features are not fully developed and this would affect its reliability.
Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, Group CEO of AirAsia and Co-Group CEO of AirAsia X said: “Airports are typically the worst part of flying. FACES marks our latest effort to make the on-ground experience more seamless and less stressful by using cutting edge biometric technology to authenticate guests.
“With FACES, your face is your passport, making it a breeze to clear the gate and board your flight. I want to thank Senai International Airport for once again supporting our efforts to improve the travel experience for our guests through digital innovation, as they did when they became the first airport in Malaysia to implement self-service baggage check-in.
“We hope the success of FACES here will serve as an inspiration and we are keen to work with other airports in Malaysia to revolutionise the way people travel with this technology and make flying enjoyable again.”
AirAsia aims to roll this feature at all airports in Malaysia and currently it is possible with Senai due to their cooperation and fast turnaround. The service is available for both domestic and international AirAsia flights from Johor Bahru.
Source : Independent Singapore and SoyaCincau.com
