In fact, there is virtually nothing a passenger who is using an e-ticket cannot do from one of these kiosks. Besides printing boarding passes, passengers can change their seats, purchase upgrades, check stand-by availability and even rebook their flight in case of cancellation-all services that formerly required standing in a check-in line. Soon, fliers may be able to further speed up the way they move through the airport with the introduction of biometric identification, like fingerprint verification or retinal scans. David Melnik is CEO of the Florida-based KineticsUSA, which produces e-ticket kiosks, is in the process of developing K-Pass, a biometric ID program that could be available to frequent fliers by the end of next year. NEWSWEEK’s Jordan Heimer spoke with Melnick about how technology is changing the way we travel.
David Melnik: I think they are on their way to being a thing of the past. The pattern with which people move throughout the airport is forever changing. TouchPort saves a customer, depending on time of day, over a one-on-one transaction, an average of about 15 minutes.
In the U.S. there are six major airlines [America West, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and US Airways] that use our TouchPorts, and almost every airport of any size, over 120 of them, have the TouchPort technology.
Well first of all, we don’t check-in minors, certainly not unaccompanied minors. The kiosks send them back to the agents. Those are the things that the agents are there for. Ultimately there is a human process involved in checking that person. I don’t think we are quite at a place where we could have just automated gates that let you onto the aircraft. Nor do I think we will ever be there. The security risks are too high.
K-Pass provides a mechanism for passengers to register as a “Known Traveler.” In that context you go through an ID-verification process in which case we query information about you through other different databases to create an ID-confidence score. We want to make sure that you are who you say you are, and that you didn’t really die 10 years ago.
We are talking about applying a mechanism by which a base level of screening can be applied to everyone. No one will receive less scrutiny. For those that need more screening, K-Pass differentiates that and directs those people to lines where they will go through more exhaustive screening. The idea of K-Pass is that is provides a much faster way to authenticate that a person is who he says he is. You will still be subject to whatever randomized screening is deemed appropriate for the general public. The problem now is that screening is done in a shotgun approach. Because no one wants to be accused of discriminating, grandmothers are asked to get out of their wheelchairs so that they can take their sandals off. It is absurd. There needs to be better information provided in order to improve the process.
The first step is to accept a better form of government-issued ID. Today the only ID that is required to get on a plane is a “government-issued ID.” We all know how weak those can be. It is not difficult to forge a driver’s license. It is also not difficult, honestly, to have forgotten your driver’s license and convince the airline that you should come through anyway because that is an exception process that has to occur. Certainly a biometric ID is much more secure than a driver’s license. Fingerprinting is what we believe will become the de facto standard.
Our testing has shown that consumers actually like it. One of the things that can add a higher level of confidence is for them to see a visible change in the process that has meaning and value.
The interesting thing is that the “Trusted Traveler” program started probably seven years ago. This is not a program purely conceived out of 9-11. What has happened is that you see a lot of shifting concerns and issues between 9-11 and today. If such a program had been available for instant rollout on 9-12, I think it would have been ratified without question and people would have implemented it. But as every month has gone on, 9-11 becomes more an anniversary and less an event. The further we get away from it, the more opportunity there is to overly analyze issues affecting program implementation. Trust is a significant issue. It is a significant issue in the context of liability. That is something that scares airlines, airports, anyone. Who is liable for incurring trust? That belongs in the domain of the federal government and not the air-travel industry.
Well, those standards are the actual elements that have to remain secret. But they include travel patterns and different attributes like histories, not just as isolated events but also in correlation with other events going on around the world. An FBI background check doesn’t mean that you are or are not a terrorist. The technology is much more sophisticated than red-flagging all people who have an FBI file. Where things are heading with this is a much broader range of data and correlation. Again, with everything we do there are sacrifices. The population has a right to know if there are programs under way, but I don’t think they have a right to know explicitly what they are and how they are being executed because that potentially violates national security.
It will become even faster as the technology keeps improving. Our goal is that by the time you have walked up in front of a self-service device and you have touched the screen, you are done. We would like to see check-in take just five to 10 seconds. And we think that is very doable in the not-so-distant future.
