Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport deploys biometric boarding with Amadeus

November 16, 2020

Last updated: November 16, 2020

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Spirit Airlines is the first to go-live with new biometric boarding experience

Broward County’s Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport (FLL) has partnered with Amadeus to facilitate biometric boarding of flights for all international departures. The upgrade delivers a touchless boarding experience whilst complying with U.S. Customs & Border Protection Agency (CBP) requirements for all international travelers to biometrically validate they have departed the country.

The modern approach uses facial-recognition technology so that international travelers departing from Fort Lauderdale can now scan their face instead of scanning a boarding pass, delivering touchless boarding experience.

With this deployment the passenger experience has taken two steps forward by not only biometrically verifying the passenger with CBP, but also matching the passenger with their booking, and automatically boarding the passenger in the airline’s Departure Control System (DCS) delivering a fully contactless experience at the boarding gate.

Spirit Airlines is the first carrier at FLL to start boarding its international flights using the touchless procedures. Passengers are verified to depart when they step in front of one of new ‘Biopods’ from ICM Airport Technics, an Amadeus company, installed at 14 of Spirit’s traditional departure gates in Terminal 4.

“Spirit is rolling out reduced-contact experiences for Guests across the country, and the work we’re doing with Amadeus in Fort Lauderdale is a great example of that,” Spirit Vice President of Airport Services Mike Byrom said. “Biometric technology will let us make the trip from curb to gate faster and easier, and it’s part of what we call the ‘Airport of the Future.’”

Each Biopod has a high-resolution 3D camera and secure encrypted connectivity to the CBP Traveler Verification System (TVS), where the image captured at the boarding gate is matched against the images stored by the CBP. Importantly, the service complies with privacy regulations as no personal biometric data is stored by Spirit, the airport, other airlines or Amadeus.

When passengers are successfully verified, a unique, tokenized identity representing that specific traveler is generated and the airline is alerted to the fact that the passenger is boarding the plane and their seat. The cloud-based Amadeus solution for biometric boarding is now available for all international airlines operating at FLL to provide a contactless travel solution.

“If they wish, international departing passengers from Fort Lauderdale can now choose a completely automated and technology-enabled experience during boarding, without the need to interact with an agent.” said Mark Gale, CEO/Director of Aviation, FLL.

“Amadeus Airport Biometric Solutions are the glue that brings our various biometric hardware devices together with the CBP’s TVS and importantly the different airline systems.,” Gale added.

"Our mission is to deliver a safer and more streamlined passenger experience. We have therefore built an end-to-end and scalable biometric solution that is flexible enough to deploy any biometric hardware device from check-in kiosks to self-bag drop devices to biometric boarding gates. The solution is easily integrated with airline systems allowing an airport to rapidly add biometric capability," added Betros Wakim, President Airport IT Americas, Airport IT, Amadeus.

The cloud-based Amadeus Airport Biometric Solutions are now available for airports seeking to remove the need for passengers to interact with agents or touch boarding gates. Biometric boarding complements a range of airport solutions that deliver a safer, more contactless airport experience.

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