Orlando International Airport will deploy the U.S. Customs and Border Protection biometric entry and exit program across its 30 gates with international departures and its CBP checkpoints. The Orlando City Council must approve the request for unbudgeted expenditures.
The program uses a camera at departure gates to match passengers with data collected by CBP, such as passport and visa photos, before boarding. For arrivals in Orlando, CBP takes photos at CBP inspection booths and matches them against photos of arriving passengers stored in government databases. On Wednesday, the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority's board approved $4 million in funding to install the system.
During tests between the airport and British Airways over the past several months, the boarding time, which no longer requires boarding passes and passports, has fallen to less than 15 minutes, according to the GOAA. The airport, which handles about 6 million international passengers per years, will be the first U.S. airport to fully deploy the CBP program.
Lufthansa is expanding a facial recognition program to more U.S. airports after a trial run in Los Angeles, JetBlue is testing a facial recognition program in Boston and Delta is testing a fingerprint-based program at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.