Terminal 4 of Singapore’s Changi Airport is now open, with biometric passenger screening enabled by IDEMIA. The airport’s Fast and Seamless Travel (FAST) program was first announced back in 2015, with Safran Identity & Security revealing its involvement soon after; Safran I&S has since gone on to merge with Oberthur Technologies to form IDEMIA, but the firm has very much remained a partner in the FAST project.
The company’s MorphoFace technology is being used to enable facial recognition for passengers at all of the airport’s security processing points for departures. It is in operation together with MorphoWay, IDEMIA’s automated gate solution, and IDEMIA says T4 can now process 16 million passengers a year. In a statement announcing the Changi Airport deployments, IDEMIA Public Security EVP Philippe Larcher said the technology offers passengers “a secure and innovative seamless experience at Terminal 4,” adding later, “At Changi Airport we are proud to contribute to the creation of the airport of the future”.
While Changi Airport offers a particularly sophisticated case, given that it has been named the world’s top airport in the Skytrax World Airport Awards, its embrace of biometric passenger processing reflects a growing trend around the world that is being fuelled both by airports seeking to enhance efficiency and the customer experience, and by governments seeking to upgrade security at border control checkpoints.
