SITA has been selected by the Greater Orlando Airport Authority (GOAA) to provide the front end biometric capture technology for a government-mandated biometric exit system that will be deployed at Orlando International Airport in the coming months.
The airport is the first in the U.S. to fully implement the biometric exit program, a recommendation by the presidential commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against the U.S. and later mandated by Congress. The authority in April agreed to spend $4 million to deploy camera systems at 30 departure gates and Federal Inspection Stations to process international travelers departing and arriving from and to the U.S.
The value of SITA’s award wasn’t disclosed and the company declined to say which camera manufacturer they are integrating into their solution.
SITA said it will deploy its Smart Path solution to 64 lanes spread over 30 gates, making it the largest deployment of its Smart Path solution in the U.S. For the biometric exit program, which is overseen by Customs and Border Protection, Smart Path uses cameras to record travelers’ faces and then sends the image to the Traveler Verification Service (TVS) for a potential match against a facial image of each traveler that is stored in the database for a particular international flight.
The TVS is a cloud-based service created by CBP with technical assistance from Unisys [UIS] for facial recognition matching. The facial recognition algorithms are supplied by Japan’s NEC Corp.
“GOAA’s implementation of SITA Smart Path for the U.S. CBP biometric exit checks will deliver a simpler travel process for the airport’s six million annual international passengers,” says Diana Einterz, president, Americas for SITA.
The deployment is expected to be completed by this October. SITA’s contract includes the technology solution, professional services, hardware and maintenance.
The contract builds off work SITA did earlier this year with GOAA, British Airways and CBP to implement biometric exit checks for the airline’s customers. SITA said that in the evaluations the facial recognition check using Smart Path also doubled as the traveler’s boarding pass, making passenger boarding easier and faster. In the evaluations, SITA said British Airways is boarding flights of nearly 240 customers in about 15 minutes.
“Our decision to implement biometric exit checks across the whole airport follow a hugely successful live trial,” says John Newsome, chief information officer for GOAA. “The innovative boarding process we tested is really popular with passengers. They simply look at the camera and within seconds the gate opens and they can board the flight. It is easy, fast and most importantly, secure. The solution works on common-use boarding gates and can easily be used by the many international airlines that we serve at MCO.”
CBP is working with other a number airports and airlines in the U.S. to evaluate biometric exit checks for departing international flights.