Air France tries out new fingerprint technique in Paris

Air France is currently testing a new fingerprint-based biometrics technique with passengers leaving for Tel Aviv at the gateway of the Roissy-Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. The voluntary experiment’s goal is to make sure that an Air France customer who dispatched a suitcase is the same passenger boarding the plane later on.

An electronic box installed atop the embarking counter registers a passenger’s fingerprints that are consequently matched with the help of a similar box hooked up at the departure exit. The technical trial is being conducted with the consent of the Paris airports and the National Information and Freedoms Commission.

The latter has issued precise recommendations aimed at protecting the confidentiality of the information the company is carefully keeping track of.

Biometrics technology allows the precise identification of human beings through an individual’s personal features such as the shape of his face or the palm of his hand, the fingerprints or the contour of the eye iris. The new system stands for a real breakthrough in the efforts to track down a passenger’s moves around an airport and ease his customs clearance and boarding, while keeping up high safety and security levels at the same time.

In this context, Air France’s General Department of Ground Exploitation is setting out to implement these new techniques that are very much in sync with today’s heightened security, the need to improve safety standards and the customization of services.