Biometric boarding for international flights at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood
Share

Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport has introduced biometric boarding for all passengers on departing international flights.
According to the Florida gateway, its new system delivers a touchless boarding experience whilst complying with US Customs & Border Protection Agency (CBP) requirements for all international travellers to biometrically validate they have departed the country.
Developed in partnership with Amadeus, the system utilises facial-recognition technology meaning that departing passengers on international services no longer have to scan their boarding boarding pass at departure gates, ensuring a touchless boarding experience.
Spirit Airlines is the first carrier at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (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,” enthuses Spirit’s vice president of airport services, Mike Byrom.
“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, FLL notes, the system 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, tokenised identity representing that specific traveller 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.
FLL’s CEO and director of aviation, Mark Gale, says: “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.
“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.”
Betros Wakim, Amadeus president airport IT for the Americas, comments: “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.”
I would like to contact someone to further discuss biometrics for applications at Port Authority airports.
973-261-2289