In news: The government has introduced Digi Yatra to make air travel hassle-free.
The facility will be available for passengers taking domestic flights at Delhi’s Terminal 3, Bengaluru and Varanasi airports.
DigiYatra will be launched at four more airports — Hyderabad, Pune, Vijaywada and Kolkata — by next March and later in rest of the country.
Among airlines, passengers travelling Air India, Vistara and IndiGo on their domestic network can avail this facility at the three airports
Digi Yatra:
It is a paperless entry at airports using facial recognition software.
It envisages that travellers pass through various checkpoints at the airport through paperless and contactless processing, using facial features to establish their identity, which would be linked to the boarding pass.
With this technology, the entry of passengers would be automatically processed based on the facial recognition system at all checkpoints – including entry into the airport, security check areas, aircraft boarding, etc.
Passengers won’t need to carry their ID card and boarding pass.
The project is being implemented by the DigiYatra Foundation — a joint-venture company whose shareholders are the Airports Authority of India (26% stake) and Bengaluru Airport, Delhi Airport, Hyderabad Airport, Mumbai Airport and Cochin International Airport.
These five shareholders equally hold the remaining 74% of the shares.
How to avail the facility:
A passenger must register their details on the DigiYatra app using Aadhaar-based validation and a self-image capture.
In the next step, the boarding pass must be scanned, and the credentials are shared with airport authorities.
At the airport e-gate, the passenger has to first scan the bar-coded boarding pass and the facial recognition system installed at the e-gate will validate the passenger’s identity and travel document.
Once this process is done, the passenger can enter the airport through the e-gate.
The passenger will have to follow the normal procedure to clear security and board the aircraft.
Significance:
Facial recognition technology is beneficial as it makes flying more convenient and reduces congestion at airports.
The facial recognition system at various airports across the globe, including Dubai, Singapore, Atlanta and Narita (Japan), have helped bring in efficiency.
