You will now be able to use your face as your travel ID.
Delta Air Lines is building facial recognition into its international terminal in Atlanta airport. The service will apply to passengers on direct flights to foreign destinations, starting later this year, and would be the first operational one in the U.S.
Passengers will be able to check in for their flights at digital kiosks using their faces instead of travel documents and use their faces again to pass through security checkpoints and the boarding gate.
“Customers have an expectation that experiences along their journey are easy and happen seamlessly—that’s what we’re aiming for by launching this technology across airport touch points,” said Delta’s COO Gil West in a statement.
The airline has been testing the service at airports in Detroit and New York and claims that the service saves passengers nine minutes per flight.
It appears that such facial recognition services will become the norm. While Delta (DAL) says passengers uninterested in airport mug shots can still proceed using a boarding card, at the Orlando airport, that’s no longer an option. Last month, officials at Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C. arrested a man using facial recognition. And the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wrote last year in its Privacy Impact Assessment Update that international travelers to or from the U.S. cannot opt out of biometric identification.
Germany and the U.K. have already been using facial recognition for security purposes at transit points for years.