IATA One ID: A vision for an end-to-end biometric passenger journey

International Airport Review and IATA are to host a two-part webinar series during 2020; providing an introductory overview of IATA’s One ID process.

This webinar, the first of the series, on 5 February 2020, will begin to portray how IATA sees the solution to be one that leverages proven technologies, existing infrastructure and puts passengers in control of their journey. Here, IATA gives an overview of what to expect from the webinar.

Why is the current passenger process not sustainable?

Passenger traffic is projected to double by 2037. The industry will not be able to handle this growth or satisfy evolving customer expectations with existing airport capacity, current processes, facilities and ways of doing business. Furthermore, accommodating growth with ever larger airports will be increasingly difficult, if not impossible. New on-ground concepts are, and increasingly will be, required to optimise the use of emerging technologies, processes and design developments.

Individual stakeholders, such as airlines, border control, customs and screening authorities, have designed their processes around their own obligations and requirements, with little or no coordination between them. This has resulted in repetitive processes for the passenger, such as having to present travel tokens (boarding passes and passports for example) to many different stakeholders for different purposes across the end-to-end passenger experience. This is inefficient and not sustainable in the long-term.

Additionally, through the IATA’s Global Passenger Survey, passengers have proven that they are expecting ever more efficiency, seamlessness and security in their air travel journey.   

What is IATA One ID?

IATA sees the solution to be one that leverages proven technologies, existing infrastructure and puts passengers in control of their journey. Equally important for One ID is the harmonised utilisation of such technologies across the global air industry stakeholders.

One ID will simplify the passenger process by removing the need for passengers to physically present documents in various combinations at multiple touchpoints, as this will be replaced by instant biometric recognition. This will deliver significant efficiencies and improvements to almost every step in the end-to-end process. One ID allows for a more personalised customer experience to be delivered, cost-efficiency to be improved, security benefits to be gained and the opportunity to generate revenue.

Enabling faster ways of establishing a trusted identity can break the traditional paradigm where security and passenger facilitation come at the expense of one another. Thus, One ID can allow for both security and passenger facilitation to be enhanced simultaneously.

Why is collaboration amongst actors key?

Alongside leveraging digital capacities, real progress can only be achieved through collaboration between airlines, airports, border agencies, screening authorities and potentially other stakeholders – all of which have ultimately as much to gain from a coordinated approach as the passenger. This webinar brings together stakeholders within the air travel continuum, including governments to discuss how to reach the future end-to-end seamless passenger journey.

What else can we expect from this webinar?

Participants will be taken through the One ID concept and vision, and how it disrupts the air transport industry by changing how industry stakeholders collaborate together to achieve common goals. Participants will be taken into a more detailed understanding of the process of the end-to-end One ID-aligned passenger journey as well as the key elements to develop such process.

Discussion will take place as well on the importance for the industry to align around standards and harmonised frameworks, processes, data models and data interchange protocols that can simplify passenger processing and reduce unnecessary and costly complexities.

Participants will hear from various stakeholders in the industry, such as from, for instance but not limited to, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, regarding the main benefits they gained so far from their existing One ID-aligned biometric processes and further benefits to be gained. As well, the webinar will supply lessons learned and challenges that have been experienced by these various stakeholders in their current implementations.