Facial identification equipment is already in place at Gate 8 of Carrasco Airport. Within a few weeks passengers flying LATAM will be the first in the region to use this biometric machinery, which identifies them via a faces scan. Another example of how Corporación América Airports running this terminal is introducing new technological solutions in Montevideo – others are passenger boarding bridges (already in use) and monitoring waiting periods in real time to predict them with greater accuracy.

This new facial recognition will eliminate the need for papers, documents or fingerprints. In midyear Carrasco Airport will begin experimenting with biometric identification using only passenger faces in the embarkment area of a gate in conjunction with LATAM Airlines. This process is smilar to that used by KLM in Los Angeles, which has reduced embarkment times by two-thirds – thus 350 passengers board an A 380 in 20 minutes instead of an hour. Or in Aruba where embarkment is 100 % biometric and automatic without queues.

Ricardo Cerri, Chief Technology Officer of the airport in Uruguay, told the 3rd Ibero-American Congress of Tourism that Carrasco Airport is being used as a testing-ground for applying digital technologies to passenger flow.

Carrasco will be the first airport in South America with biometric flow for facial recognition, Cerri affirmed. The airport administration is also applying technology designed to register and analyse passenger fingerprints – how they moved around the airport with how much waiting time and where they circulate. Such information can be used commercially to improve and balance the opposite aims of security and easing traffic flow, as well as predictive analysis, he said.

Other airports will follow, Cerri added. Biometric passenger bridges identical to Ezeiza have just been inaugurated at Ezeiza; work is underway at Aeroparque to instal them; Brasilia is trying out the concept and Corporación América’s Tuscan airports (Florence and Pisa) are placing tenders to acqire this type of technology. Monitoring waiting times is also drawing from the experience of other airports in the region.

Public opinión approves. According to a IATA study last August, 64% of respondents favour the use of biometrics for control points, 72% back self-boarding and 74% replied that 10 minutes is the longest they are willing to wait in a queue.