Chinese airports go for paperless boarding
June 11, 2019 Category China News Round-up, Weekly
Long queues at check-in and boarding gates may soon be a thing of the past at Chinese airports. Smart airports are expected to shorten the wait before passengers can take off. “We aim to achieve a totally paperless boarding process. Now, passengers can board by showing their e-boarding passes and identity documents. Ultimately, facial recognition could serve as the only means of identification and be applied to the entire journey after the initial validation of a passenger’s identity,” Liang Jia, Deputy Manager of ancillary services at the e-commerce division of China Southern Airlines, said.
“Before flights take off, we will automatically carry out online checking for those who didn’t select seats by themselves and send e-boarding cards to passengers. Such services have already been launched in 22 cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen,” she added. On January 1, China Southern started online seat selection for all domestic flights. So far, more than 77% of domestic passengers choose to select their seats online in advance. Guangzhou-based China Southern is also doing research into the development of advanced automated bag-drop machines, which would also weigh luggage and charge fees for overweight luggage.
China Southern said security check gates will be able to obtain the biometric information of passengers and combine it with their security checking results. The data would then be transferred to boarding gates. When boarding, the facial recognition machines will retrieve security check results, and passengers won’t need to show their documents again. Meanwhile, Shenzhen International Airport has introduced millimeter wave human body checking equipment. “Passengers who have good safety credit records, based on big data provided by the aviation and public security authorities, will have access to faster security checks,” said Li Yuanjing, Deputy Manager of the passenger security check team at Shenzhen airport.
From December last year to March, more than 230,000 passengers with good credit records experienced faster security checks at Shenzhen airport, spending an average of 2 minutes and 56 seconds waiting. By 2024 or 2025, China is expected to surpass the United States to become the largest air transport market globally, the China Daily reports.
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