Self-Boarding and Automated Boarding Pass Control /Border Crossing Solutions

Automation is helping in many respects in professional and everyday life these days. It is increasingly applied for passenger processes at airports. With regard to IATAs “Fast Travel Initiative”, passengers are more and more invited to carry out tasks on their own by means of “Self-Service” devices such as check-in kiosks, self-boarding gates or Automated Border Control, thus endowing the individual with greater autonomy in the complete passenger process. This development is designed to disburden personnel in favour of the crucial and demanding tasks in passenger handling.

Three major parties (airports, airlines and governments) each have their own requirements as to automation of the check-in, immigration and boarding process: passengers need a safe, quick, unfailing, easily usable and understandable process to make their way on board of a flight conveniently. Airlines as service providers and sellers rely on a failsafe and quick process that provides constantly updated information on check-in and boarding status without any additional workload or staff needed. Airports as the providers of infrastructure focus on a failsafe system that doesn’t hamper or even harm users and may easily be integrated into existing infrastructure and data systems. Security industry provides specialised tools for these purposes, the core components of which are sensor-controlled access gates and biometric recognition devices. Self-boarding, boarding pass control, border crossing, and airside separation are classical fields of process automation at airports.

Self-boarding
Self-boarding is one of the most obvious tasks that have been assigned to the passenger by means of automation. The introduction of the 2D barcode has facilitated the employment of self-boarding gates with barcode readers. One of their advantages is the fast and failsafe validation of ticket data and eligibility from printout or digital mobile devices. The self-boarding process may even start with a check-in procedure at a kiosk where ticket, passport and select biometric features are linked to each other, resulting in the direct assignment of boarding eligibility to one individual person. One of the cutting-edge solutions is the self-boarding gate Argus HSB-M03 by Kaba. Connected to a face recognition system it could facilitate self-boarding without any direct contact with the gate, just by a mere look into a camera. It also presents a good solution for identity verification at the gate with a huge acceleration potential.

Boarding pass control
The same applies to boarding pass control. If the link between airline ticket, passport image and biometric features is made, access to the airside may be granted the same way. Hence the same type of access control gates can be used for this task. Automatic units are required to support airport staff in checking boarding cards of passengers passing from the public side into the security areas of the air side more efficiently.  The supervising staff members will therefore be able to attend people who need special treatment, for example handicapped or elderly people or families with babies.

Border crossing
Today even traditionally manual processes like border crossing (be it at arrival or departure) can be automated. For legal reasons this process usually has to be even more secure and failsafe than self-boarding or access to the airside. Therefore the border crossing units are usually equipped with two sets of interlocking doors, like Kaba’s sensor barrier solutions for border crossing. The units feature a document reader for electronic passports and a face recognition system. In case of matching facial features and passport image as well as positive eligibility check the passenger may pass the gate unhindered. Otherwise the person is guided to the nearby border crossing officials who will then follow the classical manual procedure.

Airside separation
Passenger handling at airports does not end with boarding and departure. Upon arrival smooth and quick processing is required as well. One critical point is the crossing from airside to landside. Since the airside is a restricted area where only entitled individuals are allowed, it has to be thoroughly separated and controlled. One-way corridors are a proven means for this task, ensuring the continuous passenger flow towards the landside while at the same time they prevent from unauthorised access to the airside. Kaba’s Orthos PIL-M02 one-way corridors are successfully employed in many airports around the world. Their modular design makes them the ideal solution for any airport environment, even in limited space.

Security and access control automation helps manage increasing traffic. It is failsafe in validation and provides passenger safety, convenience in use, speedy processing and continuously updated information on check-in and boarding status. Kaba has teamed up with the leading integrators and system providers in airport business to be able to offer the best fitting solutions in this field. Thus technology changes passenger experience and improves service chains of airports and airlines, creating more and better business in the long run.