The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority announced Monday that Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) recently awarded it a contract for implementation of an Airports Authority-designed biometric screening system known as veriScan™. The facial-recognition technology provides a more efficient and less expensive way to process passengers for boarding international flights. 

“Biometric boarding furthers DFW’s mission to provide our passengers a more seamless travel experience,” said Julio Badin, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience at DFW Airport. “We are piloting several programs that will integrate new digital technology into the customers’ journey, and the introduction of facial recognition for our international departures will help us set the foundation for future air travel.” 

The agreement, which was approved by the DFW Board of Directors in November 2018 and formally awarded in January 2019, will assist airlines at DFW in meeting a congressionally mandated biometric exit requirement for international flights from the United States. The veriScan system will be implemented at DFW for all carriers with international routes from the airport – 14 carriers at 78 different gates. Implementation will be on-going over the next 12-15 months. 

Using proprietary software loaded on a tablet computer, veriScan encrypts and sends high-resolution photos of passengers boarding international flights to the CBP Traveler Verification Service for nearly instant identity verification. When integrated with airline boarding systems, veriScan streamlines and expedites the boarding process by eliminating the need for boarding passes.

“We created veriScan in-house to securely, expeditiously and economically solve the biometric exit challenge at our own airports and to improve the journey of our passengers – solutions which now extend to other airports and their passengers as well,” said Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Chief Information Officer Goutam Kundu. “It’s an airport solution designed by an airport, with direct input from the aviation community. We are looking forward to working closely with the DFW team to implement this at their airport.”

Since MWAA began offering veriScan, which was developed by the “MWAA Labs” division of the Airports Authority’s Office of Technology, to international flights leaving Washington Dulles International and Reagan National airports last year, veriScan’s two-step functionality has been piloted in five airports with 27 airlines on 420 flights – processing more than 61,000 passengers with a successful first-time verification rate of 98.5 percent. Several airlines at Washington Dulles International Airport, including United Airlines, Air France-KLM, Scandinavian Airlines, Emirates and Cathay Pacific, now use veriScan to expedite passenger verification on departing international flights. At Reagan National, JetBlue, the veriScan system’s first fully integrated airline partner, now uses veriScan to expedite passenger boarding on their international flights to Nassau, Bahamas using only their face as the boarding pass.