Frequent flyers receive a very controversial perk: priority boarding. On one hand – it’s lovely to settle in, stow your items and get seated. On the other hand – boarding inevitably takes forever, the plane is not a very nice environment and most people would rather board last! Just get on and go! Whatever your boarding preference, the entire process is about to get a lot faster, thanks to increased biometric boarding trials.
Biometric boarding is the end of clunky processes. It could eventually mean the end of boarding passes all together. At check in, biometric information is taken from a passenger via cameras. When the passenger then goes to board the plane, they place their boarding pass down onto a scanner and a body scan confirms everything. The passengers then walks right through the gates and onto the plane without needing to pull out ID’s or speak with staff. No beep beep, no stress. With four lanes or more operating at the same time, planes can board multiple times faster.
Lufthansa Trials
Live And Let’s Fly recently reported that Lufthansa launched biometric boarding trials at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). These trials follow British Airways, which conducted similar trials in November 2017, to great customer response. It’s been reported that the Lufthansa trials yielded fully boarded A380 SuperJumbo Jets in just 20 minutes. That’s fantastic, wherever you’re sitting. Following the success of the trials, both Lufthansa and British Airways are expanding the biometric trials to more and more US airports, including Orlando, New York JFK and Miami. Delta, JetBlue, Korean and Qantas are also leaders in this tech based approach. Still not sure how it works? Click here.
Boarding a fully laden jumbo jet, carrying up to 500 passengers in just 20 minutes is proof of the validity behind this new technology. Faster boarding means more on time flights, less time waiting for take off and on long haul journeys – precious time to relax and unwind in the terminal. Anyone who’s transited Japan has likely experienced the efficient boarding processes on offer in the region. Flights hardly ever start boarding more than 25 minutes before the scheduled departure time, yet the planes always seem to leave right on time. Let’s hope this exciting new technology brings efficiency to the rest of the world. We’re ready for the future – now.
