Biometric Boarding Arrives at JFK Airport for JetBlue Customers

“The system allows travelers for select international flights to board their flights after a simple face scan, with no need for pre-registration, since the facial recognition technology can match passengers to the boarding passes on file.”

JetBlue, the US Customs and Border Protection agency, and authorities at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York have now delivered a biometric boarding system to that location.

It’s an expansion of trial programs previously undertaken by JetBlue and the CBP at Boston’s Logan International Airport and the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida. The system allows travelers for select international flights to board their flights after a simple face scan, with no need for pre-registration, since the facial recognition technology can match passengers to the boarding passes on file. JetBlue says that since it began trialing this technology last year, it has seen over 50,000 travelers participate.

The biometric boarding system is also an extension of the biometric border screening program that the CBP first began trialing at JFK International Airport back in 2016. The program has rapidly expanded to numerous airports, with the CBP ultimately aiming to use facial recognition for traveler identification at all border checkpoints across the country.

The deployment of the biometric boarding system at JFK International Airport arrives alongside an announcement from JetBlue that the company has also now partnered with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority to launch a similar biometric boarding system at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, for passengers flying to Nassau in the Bahamas.

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November 16, 2018 – by Alex Perala