Ke ZHAO & Rongjia HU
Have you ever complained about the long queue in the airport? Have you ever been unsatisfied when you had some bad experience of an airline then never book that airline again? Yes, nowadays, the tourists behaviors changes every single day, people are more focusing on the experience that they have during their trip, even a small thing like waiting the queue could kill their satisfaction.
Recently, British Airways is trying to enhance their customers’ experiences in the airport by using the automated biometric technology and launching the self-service boarding gates. It is the first time that UK airline who launched this technology in the airport. More than 4000 passengers already used this self-service boarding gate and experienced this new technology.
This kind of self-service boarding gate enables passengers to own a smooth travel, which means that when the passengers get close to the gate, they will scan their boarding pass by their own and just walk through the gate and go into the airplane, they do not need to wait in the long queue and go through one by one after scanning by the staff.
As for the security, a digital facial scan can help. The special IT technology can record all the passengers’ face when they travel through the security check channel, and then after they arrive and stand in front of the boarding gate, the machine would show their face and the computer will check the match to ensure if they are the same person so that the security procedure can be simplified accordingly.
There is no doubt that it is one more successful application in the combination of technology and tourism, to a large extent, it cuts down the long waiting time, improves the efficiency and also it simplifies and speeds up passengers’ journeys.
For now this kind of self-service boarding gate is just used for the UK domestic flights, and only one terminal in the Heathrow airport. It is said that there will be three more self-boarding gates opening at each domestic departure stand each week until mid-June 2017, and also British Airways would like to expand the scope of international flights.
Personally, I have a deep concern about the security, if one day the self-service boarding gate is really used in the international flights, is the digital facial scan can be so powerful enough to recognize the countless international human faces with mixture of different races and different ages. As we all know that the terrorism is a serious problem all over the world, especially getting severer nowadays in Europe, some terrorists are trying to harm people in the public places like airports and train stations, so the security is the most important thing for all of us. When we are devoting to invent new technologies and figure new ways out to improve the quality of our travel and our life, at the same time, we should find a solution to ensure the most significant and also the basic need, the security.
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