The Ministry of Civil Aviation’s (MoCA) ‘Digi Yatra’ initiative is making quick progress in its efforts to deliver a seamless, hassle-free passenger experience at Indian airports. The first phase is slated to go live at selected Indian airports, next year. Passengers using Digi Yatra need not present their tickets/ boarding passes and physical Identity cards at various airport check points, since these will already have been integrated with the passenger’s identity document.
First announced in August 2018, Digi Yatra will introduce facial recognition enabled e-boarding systems and the proposed Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem is planned to go live in March 2022, according to MoCA. Following its launch next year, the Digi Yatra initiative will be scaled up in a phased manner across various Indian airports.
This digitally enabled initiative is expected to further aid in the revival of the aviation industry by increasing passenger confidence in air travel, since face recognition technology allows the boarding procedures to be carried out without contact between passengers and airport/ airline staff.
The aviation sector in India has been severely affected by the disruption in air travel due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the estimated losses incurred by airlines and airports in India in FY 2020-21 stood at approximately INR 19,564 crore and INR 5,116 crore respectively. Automating the boarding process will allow airlines and airport operators to save on labour costs and increase productivity, which will be key to their early return to profitability.
Ushering In Change
According to information provided by MoCA to Parliament in December, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) is working on implementing Facial Recognition Technology based Biometric Boarding System as part of the 1st phase of Digi Yatra implementation at four airports located at Varanasi, Pune, Kolkata and Vijayawada. These four AAI-run airports and three other joint venture airports, namely Hyderabad International airport, Bangalore international airport and Delhi international airport have all completed preliminary testing of the Digi Yatra biometric boarding systems with registration only for the ‘Day of Travel’.
Airports and airlines had already taken initiatives to launch biometric boarding systems, even before the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic to minimise physical interaction at the Terminal Entry, Kiosk Check-in/ Self Bag Drop, Entry to Security Hold Area and at the Boarding Gate, which are the four important passenger journey points at an airport. Vistara was first Indian airline in 2019 to start trials of a biometric facial recognition entry and boarding solution for passengers.
As per the Digi Yatra policy, registering for the Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem is optional to passengers. To avail these services, a passenger would have to share their travel details such passenger details, PNR and facial biometrics through an app to the Biometric Boarding System of the respective departing airport. Keeping customer sensitivities related to information sharing in mind, the Government has provided the option to passengers for not sharing their data and using the existing manual boarding process at airports for a particular journey.
The safe and secure handling of passenger data remains a key concern and hence any biometric data collected will only be used for passenger authentication and verification of passengers and all data shared by passenger will be retained during the transit of the passenger at the airport and not be stored for more than 24 hours after take-off/ departure of the flight. The data will also not be shared with any other external stakeholders.
According to MoCA, the Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem will undergo frequent assessments by independent teams to assess the level of security and system resilience to protect PII, in addition to periodic audits by governing/ regulatory bodies such as Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) and/or Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) etc., which will take place twice every year.
It also states that the facial recognition technologies are being used are as per industry ISO standards with best-in-class US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) listed algorithms, complying with data privacy and data protection requirement as laid down by government.
State Of The Art Technology
Japan’s NEC Corporation was awarded the contract by AAI in 2019 to implement its facial recognition technology based Biometric Boarding System (BBS) at Varanasi, Pune, Kolkata and Vijayawada airports as part of Digi Yatra. NEC's face recognition technology is already being used in the USA by the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and at several airports such as John F Kennedy International Airport. NEC has evolved its image recognition technology over the past 60 years, first starting out as an effort to decipher handwritten postal codes in Japan.
According to NEC, face recognition technology has now evolved to the point where, once an individual’s face is registered, it can recognise that face with over 99% accuracy, even with a mask on.
NEC's face recognition technology is already being used for a next-generation boarding procedure system called Face Express, which was rolled out at Japan’s Narita International Airport earlier this year. This system uses face recognition to allow passengers, who have registered a photo of their face at check-in to pass through multiple touch points, including entrance to security checkpoints and boarding gates. Two Japanese airlines, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Japan Airlines (JAL) are also working to introducing Face Express.
As per MoCA, the Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem will also be aligned to the global processes of International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Travel Pass for interoperability and seamless international travel. Travel Pass is more secure and efficient than current paper processes used to manage health requirements and more than 50 airlines have signed up to trial IATA Travel Pass, including IndiGo and SpiceJet.
Passengers can download the IATA Travel Pass mobile app to store and manage their verified certifications for COVID-19 tests or vaccines. The app will help manage and verify the secure flow of testing or vaccination information between governments, airlines, laboratories and passengers, which will guarantee their COVID-19 status.
The IATA Travel pass is being built with four modules (entry requirement registry, test centre registry, certification holder, and digital identity) and can be used together as a whole solution or in combination with other solutions. The Travel Pass app will not store any data centrally and only facilitate entities such as airlines and governments that need to verify the passengers’ test or vaccination data. The verification can be performed only after the passenger authorisation for the same is received.