CBP Launches Biometric Exit Trial for Flights from Dulles to Dubai

The US Customs and Border Protection agency has announced the deployment of a biometric exit system at Washington Dulles International Airport.

The system is based on facial recognition, matching live facial scans to the ID documents submitted by travelers to the participating airline. If the facial scan matches with the biometric data associated with a given traveler’s passport, that traveler is automatically excluded from the biometric exit program, and her or his photo is discarded soon after; thus the biometric exit system applies only to non-citizens.

Building on an earlier trial at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, it’s a modest step forward in the CBP’s broader Biometric Entry-Exit Program, applying only to one daily flight from Washington to Dubai. But the CBP says “[f]uture deployments of the technology are planned for additional airports this summer,” according to a statement on the agency’s website.

The news comes soon after the announcement at the end of last month that the CBP is working with SITA and US airline JetBlue to trial a biometric traveler screening system that does away with paper and mobile travel documents for Aruba-based flights departing from Boston’s Logan International Airport.