New biometric service for Lufthansa Group HON Circle Members and Senators at the Capital Airport: “BER Traveller” now provides fast access to priority security checkpoints
Joint project of the Lufthansa Group and Berlin Brandenburg Airport
Access via facial recognition to the Lufthansa Lounge and use of the BER Self Service machines planned
Berlin Brandenburg Airport is introducing BER Traveller, a digital service for biometric access control. Effective immediately, HON Circle Members and Senators of Lufthansa Group Airlines Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings can enjoy the new service at BER. Until now, they had to show their boarding pass to get to the priority lane of the security checkpoint. This is now no longer necessary. Conveniently and smoothly, these passengers now have fast access to the priority security checkpoint via a separate lane using facial recognition. All they need to do is log in and register their biometric data once in the app from the provider FastID. They will receive an invitation to do so by mail from their airline.
With this new offer, the Lufthansa Group and BER are expanding the range of digital services for passengers in a joint project. For the introduction, the offer is initially aimed exclusively at HON Circle Members and Senators of Lufthansa Group Airlines. In a next step, it will also be possible to use the BER self-service machines, board at the gate and access the Lufthansa Group Lounge via facial recognition.
Heike Birlenbach, Head of Customer Experience Lufthansa Group, emphasizes: “We are sustainably improving the travel experience of our passengers through biometric, contactless offerings, as they enable simplified and more efficient processes at airports. I am delighted that we can now offer this innovative service to our HON Circle Members and Senators in Berlin. At all locations where biometric matching has already been introduced, our customers are extremely appreciative of this new offering.”
Thomas Hoff Andersson, Managing Director Operations at Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg GmbH, added: “We are delighted to have convinced the Lufthansa Group, one of our most important customers, of the great potential of facial recognition for smarter passenger processes at BER. This is a good basis for offering the new product “BER Traveller” to passengers of other airlines as well. With FastID, we have the right partner to make departures from BER faster and easier with the possibilities of digital facial recognition.”
Use of the new biometric service is completely voluntary. The personal and biometric data is stored decentrally in the passengers’ app. Before each trip, passengers who have registered in the app decide anew whether they want to use the service for the next flight. Only then is an encrypted transmission of the data (flight data and biometric recognition features) and the photos taken later at the airport made to FastID for matching. After the flight, the data is deleted from FastID and remains exclusively in the passenger’s app. Passengers have full control over the data in the app and can delete it completely at any time.
Verification at the process points is done by taking photos using fixed cameras at the process points and matching the photos with the biometric passenger data from the app (facial recognition) by FastID.
Albert van Veen, CEO of FastID, said, “The implementation at BER Airport represents a new era of identity control in travel – one that is fully decentralized and puts individuals in control of their own data. With FastID, BER Airport has empowered passengers to take back the responsibility of their travel, offering biometric identification for faster and smoother travel. FastID puts the passenger at the center of the journey, enabling an experience filled with convenience and security.”
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