(05/04/24) SITA has published a white paper that highlights how the surge in air travel places
extraordinary pressure on airports, national
borders and airline resources, and suggests that the “existing paper-based
and manual travel infrastructure and legacy processes simply won’t
be able to cope”.
In 1930, only around 6,000 passengers travelled by
air. By 1934, this had risen to just under 500,000. Fast-forward
to 2019 and it had exploded to 4 billion travelers and IATA has
forecast that 8 billion people will travel by air annually by
2040.
To prepare for this, there are hundreds of new
airports being built and major construction projects underway
at existing airports around the world. However, bricks and mortar infrastructure is only part of the solution
as without state-of-the-art, adaptable digital solutions,
airlines and airports will struggle to manage passenger numbers.
SITA boarding gate at DMK in Bangkok, Thailand. Picture by Steven Howard of TravelNewsAsia.com
SITA believes that the solution involves harnessing the
power of facial and fingerprint biometrics to create a smoother
and
safer air transport experience.
The white paper takes us behind the scenes by
showcasing successful case studies such as the Star Alliance
Biometric initiative and the Indian government’s DigiYatra
program. Both cases use the end-to-end biometric passenger
processing solution SITA Smart Path.
“SITA Smart Path biometrically enables every step of the
passenger journey, from mobile enrollment to aircraft boarding and
every point in between and beyond,” said Stefan Schaffner, VP of
Airports at SITA. “With facial recognition across
as many airport touch points as you need, it lets passengers
manage their identity across their whole journey, in a unique and touchless way. The final result is a radically improved travel
experience.”
The white paper goes on to outline how other solutions
use advanced biometrics technology, including SITA Flex – a
common-use passenger processing platform, and SITA Border
Management – which covers border control, risk intelligence, and
travel authorization. Both solutions are already used by more than 40 airports globally.
The
white paper also breaks down SITA’s Digital Travel Credentials
(DTC) solution, a hotly anticipated verifiable digital identity
shared before arrival (with the passenger’s consent) for seamless
border crossing.
As a member of both the IATA’s One ID initiative
and the International Civil Aviation Organization’s DTC, SITA is
doing extensive work on border-grade DTCs and is
helping define rigorous standards around passenger identity
management within biometrics.
An example of this is how SITA DTCs
were used to create Aruba’s Happy One Pass, a collaboration which
enables passengers arriving at the Caribbean island nation of Aruba
to “disembark at international arrivals and cross the border
without stopping or even showing a travel document”.
The white paper’s release, along with its case
studies and insights, reveals that the future of travel isn’t some
distant concept anymore, it’s happening now.
The 41-page, 3.38 MB white paper can be downloaded
in .pdf format free of charge from SITA’s website,
here.
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