AirAsia is the first airline in Asia to speed up plane boarding with facial recognition

AirAsia has officially launched its Fast Airport Clearance Experience System (FACES) at Senai International Airport, Johor Bahru, which will enable passengers to board their flight faster. Using facial recognition technology, it eliminates the need of showing your boarding pass and ID at the departure gate.

With its automated boarding gate, the entire process of boarding about 180 passengers will take between 9-11 minutes instead of 11-13 minutes with the current process. It’s slightly faster and it matters a lot for an airline like AirAsia which has a turnaround of just 25 minutes.

The automated gate system uses Gunnebo’s solution and we are told that the facial recognition system has a success rate of 80% 98%. AirAsia says it will work with twins but we are told that it is yet to be tested.

UPDATE: AirAsia has clarified that the success rate is 98%, not 80% as reported earlier.

At the moment, FACES will only work with adults aged 18 and above. For other passengers including those travelling with infants or those requiring additional assistance would need to go through the standard security screening and boarding process. Unfortunately, younger passengers aged below 18 years old are not permitted as their facial features are not fully developed and this would affect its reliability.

To get started, passengers would need to enrol themselves in the system with either their MyKad or passport. It takes just 30 seconds to enrol at the kiosk and it can be done at anytime before or after the check-in counter has closed. You won’t need to enrol again unless you change your MyKad or have renewed your passport. FACES is also open for foreigners as well.

Once that’s done, just proceed with the usual security and immigration clearance and head to the boarding gates. You would still need a printed boarding pass or mobile check-in QR code as it is still required by the authorities.

With FACES, each passenger can be cleared between 1.5 to 4 seconds. If there are any issues, you can still proceed with the manual process through an AirAsia staff.

At the moment, there’s just one facial recognition enrolment kiosk at the self-check-in area and three auto boarding gates (Gate 1, 2, 3) at Senai International Airport, Johor. AirAsia aims to roll this feature at all airports in Malaysia and currently it is possible with Senai due to their cooperation and fast turnaround. The service is available for both domestic and international AirAsia flights from Johor Bahru.