Technology is opt-in for now and used at limited number of gates, with more to be added later >>
American Airlines has started using facial recognition technology on passengers at boarding gates at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, where passengers can get their faces scanned instead of using their boarding passes to board the plane. However, passengers still need both their boarding passes and ID’s to get through airport security. The technology is currently opt-in only, and passengers can use their ID’s instead, according to American.
For now, facial recognition is being used only in Terminal D of the airport, which is used for international flights, but American said it plans to expand the technology to 75 different international boarding gates across its terminals. American said it does not keep the pictures of faces, claiming “no customer biometrics will ever be stored.” The airline said the scanned images are sent to a cloud database used by US Customs and Border Protection.