‘Facial recognition is the easy part’: the results of the digital travel ID pilot are in

Air travel has become increasingly complicated. From security and passport checks to special documents such as COVID-19 certificates, passengers should prepare carefully before going on holiday. The number of aircraft and passengers has also increased, putting pressure on airports to reduce waiting times. Future travel authorization systems, such as the European Union’s Entry-Exit System (EES), are expected to make our leisure getaways and business trips even more complex.

One solution that could eliminate some of this complexity is Digital Travel Credentials (DTCs).

Europe and Canada just completed the world’s first transatlantic Digital Travel Credential pilot using the DTC-1 model, allowing Belgian, Dutch and Canadian passport holders to jump through the lines with an app that enables biometric verification with a selfie.

“The big challenge is that the entire infrastructure is not yet ready and we are still in the early stages,” says Nick van Straten, program director of biometrics and clearance at KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. “But what we all know is that facial recognition is the easy part and the algorithms and technology are truly state-of-the-art.”

Van Straten shared the results of the DTC pilot during a webinar organized by Border Security Report.

The pilot was carried out by a Dutch consortium, co-financed by the European Commission. The public-private partnership involves several entities, including the Dutch Ministry of Justice & Security, KLM, Transport Canada and Idemia, which provided the biometric verification technology.

From a border management perspective, the DTC works, says Lisette Looren de Jong, Innovation Border Management program manager at the Ministry of Justice and Security. The digital document reduced border crossing time to around 10 to 14 seconds, with the fastest crossing taking only around six seconds. The trials were conducted at Montréal-Trudeau International Airport and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, where airport authorities installed new tap-and-go eGates.

“It resulted in significant time savings at border crossings,” she says. “This could really be a game changer and a very important start for a new and innovative border management process in the Netherlands.”

However, it is not yet clear whether travelers will embrace the new digital references. The pilot invited more than 10,000 passengers, involving more than 1,000 passengers. However, only half went through the process.

Speakers attributed this result to the fact that the pilot lasted only three months. But some passengers also found it challenging to participate due to the high standard of security and data privacy.

“Moving into the future, we need to find a balance between IT security and data privacy, but also allow customers to easily enroll,” says van Straten.

One of the positive results is that 85 percent of the passengers registered for the flight were able to board successfully.

During the pilot, travelers were invited to download the DTC app created by the Dutch government from the Android store and verify themselves from home. The machine-readable passport (MRZ) verifies the age and nationality of passengers and also checks the chip of the electronic Machine Readable Travel Document (eMRTD).

In the next step, passengers were asked to take a selfie video for biometric comparison. The fault code is then stored locally on the phone and remains there for the next 72 hours. The time frame is limited because the pilot project aims for data minimization, explains Peter Guezen, project manager at Idemia Smart Identity. DTCs can be reused in the future.

The passenger must still register for their specific flight or border control. They can then go through KLM eGates, which check their faces and match them with the information in the DTC. Finally, the passenger is asked to tap their passport on the eGate terminal and the gates open.

In the future, the DTC experiment will have to answer many more questions, including those about the storage and processing of data in accordance with the EU AI Act and the GDPR. The digitalization of passport verification needs to be looked at holistically, from legislation to the role of airlines and even the information that passports should contain.

“When you talk about interoperability and how this will work throughout the process at every port, we really have a lot of work to do before we can scale this up,” Van Straten adds.

EIC session explores the future of travel with digital travel credentials

Article topics

biometrics | border management | Canada | digital ID | digital travel data | IDEMIA | Netherlands | pilot project | public-private partnerships