
Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding - us0r
https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2018/09/dulles-airport-surprises-passengers-facial-recognition-boarding/151095/
======
Johnny555
_The scan takes fractions of a second and has shown to be 99 percent accurate
during testing_

Presumably it's 99% effective at matching random faces to the photos -- if a
terrorist group has a pool of 1000 stolen passports, with a system that's only
99% effective at maching a random photo, I think they could do much better at
finding a person (perhaps with some surgical alterations) that fits in that
1%.

 _The process eliminates the need for an airline employee to manually check
every boarding pass and passport while boarding a plane._

So at least they are clear that this is a cost-saving method for airlines, it
has nothing to do with speeding boarding or making boarding more secure.

 _This spring, Lufthansa announced that it boarded an A380 with over 350
passengers at LAX in less than 20 minutes—less than half of their normal
time—using self-boarding gates linked to CBP’s facial-enabled traveler
verification service,” McAleenan said. “No more fumbling with your boarding
pass while you have two carry-ons, maybe a kid; no more trying to find your QR
code or trying to refresh your screen._

Oh wait, I guess it is about speeding boarding... but is boarding pass
scanning really what slows boarding? I always seem to get backed up in the
line at the plane door, waiting for everyone to stow their carryons and sit
down. Most busy flights have two agents scanning and most people who have
flown more than once scan their pass/phone quickly.... I'm surprised it's any
faster getting people to stand in the right spot and stand still for a photo.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Self-scanning in supermarkets was supposedly all about speeding checkout as a
benefit to the consumer. This is about speeding boarding - that's the
marketing friendly benefit to be shouted about.

In actuality supermarket self-scanning is often slower than a traditional
checkout queue. Particularly when items require staff authorisation. I expect
this to be no better than traditional boarding in most cases.

The real benefit to both this, and supermarket self-scanning, is another low
wage employee can be canned. This isn't a very marketing friendly message so
it's no surprise that this isn't the message that publicised loudest.

~~~
Groxx
Per item? Sure. For small numbers of items, counting time spent waiting? Heck
no, I regularly get through self-checkout _much_ faster than people who get
into a regular queue, in no small part because there's often a few times more
self-checkout scanners than there are open checkouts.

When you have a full cart or two, the speedier scanning at a traditional
checkout pays off. But usually both are available, not just self checkout, so
you're free to choose when that isn't the case.

~~~
Spooky23
Checkout queue optimization at a supermarket is pretty easy. It's all about
time per scan. A good cashier (60-70 scans per minute) can be something like
50% more productive due to scan time savings. A slow cashier (10 scans per
minute) is a drag.

Self-checkout is all about cutting labor hours, period. It is both slower and
leads to much higher shrink (as much as 150% more) than a manned casher.
Stores hope to make more money by keeping the store open longer. The hacks
around the slowness of checkout without cashiers is for people optimizing for
time is online ordering or shopping at midnight.

~~~
ambicapter
60-70 scans per minute? A scan per second? Yeah I'm not buying it.

~~~
joecool1029
I’m guessing you’ve never been to an Aldi. They seem to have worked out high
speed scanning.

~~~
ambicapter
I have in fact never been to an Aldi.

------
skywhopper
I’m skeptical of the faster boarding claim. My perception is that it’s the
physical loading of the plane cabin, rather than the scanning of boarding
passes, that wastes time. Also, having dealt with the face scanners at the
border entry points I’m also skeptical that self service face scanning will be
faster than just scanning a boarding pass. Not to mention that security, not
boarding, is the painful part of the process anyway. And 99% accuracy is not
actually great...

~~~
rdtsc
> “This spring, Lufthansa announced that it boarded an A380 with over 350
> passengers at LAX in less than 20 minutes—less than half of their normal
> time—using self-boarding gates linked to CBP’s facial-enabled traveler
> verification service,” McAleenan said.

Lufthansa got on the PR train perhaps. Who knows? 20 doesn't sound a lot, but
over many flights it starts to add up.

I think it is mostly about the international travelers just like the first
sentence says:

> Some international travelers can leave their boarding passes and passports
> in their pockets when flying out of Dulles International Airport

They check the passports at the gate making sure you didn't swap boarding
passes with someone else. For domestic travel it is usually just as you said -
scan the bar code and move on.

~~~
craftyguy
> “This spring, Lufthansa announced that it boarded an A380 with over 350
> passengers at LAX in less than 20 minutes—less than half of their normal
> time—using self-boarding gates linked to CBP’s facial-enabled traveler
> verification service,” McAleenan said.

This smells of a staged PR stunt. Or, maybe "boarded" means people were all
through the gate, but not necessarily on the plane?

~~~
T-hawk
That last has to be it. Every flight I've ever boarded has been bottlenecked
at the jetway by people getting themselves and their carryons loaded and
situated, not the speed of scanning the boarding document.

At best, it means they boarded an A380 through multiple doors in parallel
instead of all through a single scanning location. This only matters for
planes big enough to have multiple entrances.

~~~
toweringgoat
They always board A380s through multiple doors. But they probably had a flight
full of Germans - Americans tend to take a lot longer to get themselves sat
down than most Europeans do, and spend a lot more time faffing around with
their bag and belongings while blocking the aisle.

The Japanese are still the most efficient at boarding though.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Do you have data for this? I've never seen a study on airplane boarding
efficiency by ethnicity.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> “It doesn’t matter,” Maryland resident Kim Meekins said of not being
informed ahead of time. “You go to different airports and they do different
things depending on their technology. If it’s another safety measure to make
sure everyone has a safe flight, I’m all for whatever. I didn’t need to be
notified ahead of time.”

"I'm all for whatever"! The hell does one engage rationally with _that_?

~~~
INTPenis
Frequent fliers are business people, professional people. They fly all the
time to get things done. Very unlikely to care about privacy issues. They most
likely use several cloud services with no worry at all.

These are the majority of people in the world. HN is a bubble.

~~~
wemdyjreichert
> Frequent fliers are business people, professional people. They fly all the
> time to get things done. Very unlikely to care about privacy issues. They
> most likely use several cloud services with no worry at all.

> These are the majority of people in the world. HN is a bubble.

Yep. We're past the point of caring. The frog has been slowly boiled.

------
acjohnson55
I can't remember a time when I boarded a plane that I didn't have to wait in a
queue on the jet bridge. How does this help with that? Also, I'm constantly
seeing people accidentally end up in the wrong row or seat because they
misread the label up above. Invariably, everyone takes out boarding passes to
sort it out.

Reeks of a trojan horse to get more pervasive face scanners in place.

~~~
melkiaur
I've only been once in Washington, and it was ages ago. But they have this
incredible system where they put you in a massive bus (At first I didn't even
realise it was a bus, it looked more like a room), and the bus goes to the
plane, lifts ups, and docks to the plane door. So, it's very important they
can cram the people in the bus as fast as possible. Do a google image search
for "Dulles buses", you'll understand what I'm on about.

But this benefit (of accelerated boarding) would apply to any airport where
you don't go into a jet bridge but have to take the bus to go to the plane.

~~~
jandrese
They have not used the "mobile lounges" for normal boarding since the 80s.
That said, occasionally when there is a fuckup they still have to use them,
but it's rare. Almost every flight uses either the jetbridge or the stairs
(for tiny commuter flights).

------
exabrial
This is a great time to remind everyone to buckle their seatbelts tomorrow.
You have a much greater chance of dying in a car wreck tomorrow than you will
in your cumulative lifetime risk of dying in an aviation terrorist incident.

Also don't mind the giant pile of cash someone got paid with public funds to
address this crisis via government contacts.

~~~
optimiz3
Counterpoint - could be evidence the security measures are working. More data
needed.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Counterpoint - could be evidence the security measures are working. More
> data needed.

The TSA itself has admitted that there is no evidence of a threat of terrorism
against aviation in the US[0].

[0] [https://professional-troublemaker.com/2013/10/17/tsa-
admits-...](https://professional-troublemaker.com/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-in-
leaked-doc-no-evidence-of-terrorist-plots-against-aviation-in-us/)

------
noobermin
>For Thea Ottersen of Norway, privacy was not a major concern, as the general
procedure doesn’t differ much from what she has come to expect from American
airport security.

I suppose that's one unfortunate way to look at it.

~~~
camillomiller
I mean, technically it's true. Data and pictures are already there and
aggregated. We're already past the non-return point. It just took 17 years
from this day in 2001.

------
refurb
Once facial recognition becomes commonplace, the impact will be huge.

“What were your whereabouts on the night of June 5th?”

“I was at home all night.”

“You’re lying. We have confirmation your face was recognized at the gas
station, grocery store and bank between the hours of 7 and 9pm.”

That sends a shiver down my spine.

~~~
noobermin
Is this situation any different from security footage already at gas stations
and the like? I suppose automatic aggregation of said data is more
problematic.

~~~
weej
I'd like to think so. A grainy, CCTV at a gas station with ZERO FACIAL
RECOGNITION is not correlated and crossed check with my passport photo or
physical movements.

~~~
alphakappa
CCTVs don’t have to be grainy and low-res anymore. Recording 4K video and
storing a finite amount of it is getting cheaper every day.

------
mlthoughts2018
> “The process eliminates the need for an airline employee to manually check
> every boarding pass and passport while boarding a plane.”

But you can hold accountable an airline or customs gate agent who doesn’t have
access to a library of images forming a signature of your face and who may be
bound by policies or laws regarding privacy and identity that could be nearly
impossible to enforce or even verify with a digital system.

> “No more fumbling with your boarding pass while you have two carry-ons,
> maybe a kid; no more trying to find your QR code or trying to refresh your
> screen.”

Yikes, this sounds like Idiocracy to me. I frequently am the befuddled dad
traveling with kids and bags, and I can tell you that apart from very
exceptional circumstances or special needs, this is not at all any kind of
serious inconvenience that requires more surveillance culture. (And for truly
special needs situations, there are many parsimonious solution possibilities
that don’t use a bazooka to swat a fly like this face recognition system is
doing...)

~~~
wahern
I mean, from a security and safety standpoint it fails. From a financial
standpoint it makes perfect sense, especially if CBP is picking up the tab.

Not having to dedicate an employee to each gate that is currently boarding is
a huge labor saver for airlines. From CBP's standpoint, they get to use fancy
new technology while also furthering mission creep. It's win-win.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I’m super skeptical that it’s actually a financial cost saver. The data
infrastructure and sunk costs are quite high for systems like this, and the
non-zero defect or failure rates mean you still generally have to employ most
of the same staff. They just do something else on the computer or deal with
other gate check issues, stuff they generally still had to do already while
scanning people onto the plane.

Face recognition systems are notoriously difficult to implement in a way that
actually saves money.

Even if boarding huge flights happens faster, the limiting factors are usually
runway traffic delays and other problems anyway.

All this infrastructure only so _sometimes_ on a few international flights,
when no special issues pop up, they can possibly save a small amount of money
(relative to other costs involved) by boarding slightly faster (a matter of a
few dozen minutes, max) and potentially depart sooner if there’s no other type
of hold up.

It doesn’t add up.

~~~
wahern

      The data infrastructure and sunk costs are quite high for systems like this, and the non-zero defect or failure rates mean you still generally have to employ most of the same staff.
    

Right, which is why one could reasonably speculate that CBP is picking up the
cost of the system. Without the capital costs it could easily make sense.

The clincher would be how edge cases are handled. Is CBP paying for a human
behind the scenes to remotely override rejections? Is it acceptable customer
service for falsely rejected passengers to wait at the gate until shortly
before departure when an airline employee can show up to double-check their
documents?

------
bogomipz
So after the 20 to 30 minute procedure of handing your ID and boarding pass to
a TSA agent, taking off your shoes, belt, emptying your pockets and having a
full body scan done, adding a facial scan at the gate is somehow going to
improve both boarding time and security. Right that makes sense. This shit
needs to stop.

------
azernik
Note - this is only for _international_ flights, where CBP takes your photo
anyway.

Data retention period is 14 days for pilot testing, 12 hours for some
unspecified "short term", and zero after that.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> Note - this is only for international flights, where CBP takes your photo
> anyway.

Not typically on outbound flights, only inbound as part of customs.

~~~
jambo
And inbound is only because they have installed kiosks that they guide
everyone to. Otherwise if you go to a CBP agent they don't take your photo if
you're a US passport holder. The kiosks are an end-run around tradition/rules
about how CBP can treat Americans.

~~~
azernik
> they don't take your photo if you're a US passport holder

This is very much in the "you don't _have_ to go through the body scanners" at
the airport category. By default they take your photo and fingerprint, even if
you're a US citizen; the specific language on CBP's website is:

"At this time, CBP does not require U.S. Citizens to have their photos
captured when entering or exiting the country. U.S. Citizens who request not
to participate in this biometric collection process may notify a CBP Officer
or an airline or airport representative in order to seek an alternative means
of verifying their identity and documents."

[https://www.cbp.gov/travel/biometrics](https://www.cbp.gov/travel/biometrics)

~~~
JoshTriplett
> By default they take your photo and fingerprint, even if you're a US citizen

Photo, yes; fingerprint, no. Every customs station I've been through when re-
entering the US has taken photos but not fingerprints. (They do require
fingerprints from non-US-citizens.)

~~~
azernik
I've had my fingerprint taken (also US citizen)

------
ReGenGen
The speed of boarding pass checks is rarely the limiting factor for loading a
plane. Perhaps the A380 is different? Are they comparing a single human
boarding pass checker vs multiple facial scanner lanes?

~~~
paxy
I can see the number of scanning lanes (which is usually 1) being a bottleneck
on large aircrafts with lots of doors, like the A380 example they have given.

~~~
sokoloff
I've very rarely seen the case where there isn't a queue after the boarding
pass scan and before the boarding door(s) and seating area of the airplane.

This suggests that downstream of the boarding pass scan is _already_ the true
bottleneck of the system.

~~~
stevehawk
i believe that's why he (and the article) mentioned the A380 which can have
something like 4 simultaneous embarking points (probably double that if they
board from both sides of the plane).

~~~
sokoloff
I’ve only flown the A380 twice. Both times that still had a bottleneck in
economy of people getting settled despite boarding through multiple jetways.

The bottleneck is at the seats, esp in coach/economy. On a single-aisle
aircraft, this typically backs up onto the jetway, but even multiple
door/aisle, the slowest agent can scan tickets and check IDs faster than
people can get settled on average even when some of them can settle in
parallel (perhaps one per aisle per very few rows).

------
jedberg
> Officials touted the additional security the system provides—meeting a
> Congressional mandate to include biometric screenings—

Said someone who clearly doesn’t understand security. The entire point of
adding biometrics is that it is _in addition to_ the passport, not instead of.
All they’ve done here is trade something you have with something you are.
Sigh.

~~~
gok
To say that a boarding pass is “something you have” in a security sense is
absurd. I can print your boarding pass merely by knowing your name and where
you’re going. A biometric check (backed by a paper ID check) is a dramatic
security upgrade over that.

~~~
blitmap
Passports are printed similar to currency. There are many features in them
that are hard to replicate. It can be done but not easily, so it does fit the
bill of "something you have" to authenticate. Not nearly as secure as a
yubikey or an rsa token, but oh well.

~~~
gok
Again this isn’t at passport control, it’s to board the plane after security.

~~~
robotresearcher
Where your passport is again checked on most international flights. Or your
driver’s license / photo ID on internal flights in many countries.

------
acd
But people have similar faces called eigen faces in Mathematics. This is not
Secure because faces are not unique. Similar to finding a similar to you
looking face on the street/internet. Humans have an average faces and then
diverge from that.

Eigenface
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenface)

------
monksy
Nope. This needs to be protested.

------
ajenner
_The system then compares the photo to a gallery that includes images of that
person—either their passport photo for U.S. citizens or the photo taken of
foreign nationals when they entered the country._

So those of us with dual nationality, who enter the US on our US passports and
leave on our foreign passports, are going to get screwed. Lovely.

~~~
laken
If you are a US citizen, it's illegal to enter or leave the US with another
country's passport anyway, even if you're a dual citizen.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1185](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1185)

~~~
themaninthedark
I am not a lawyer but I don't read that as you have to present your US
passport to enter or leave. Only that you must have a valid US passport with
you when you do so.

>(b) Citizens

>Except as otherwise provided by the President and subject to such limitations
and exceptions as the President may authorize and prescribe, it shall be
unlawful for any citizen of the United States to depart from or enter, or
attempt to depart from or enter, the United States unless he bears a valid
United States passport.

------
camillomiller
17 years after 9/11, my question is: we never had any other event comparable
to the twin towers attack because of the extreme security measures we took
after that? Or is it a false causality? Can we even establish causality
between the enhanced security and the lack of large-scale airplane
attacks/hijackings?

~~~
mikestew
_we never had any other event comparable to the twin towers attack because of
the extreme security measures we took after that?_

We never had a comparable event _before_ 9/11/01\. OK City, one ham-fisted
attack on WTC in the 90s, British burned down the White House in the 1800s,
but nothing of that scale prior. And 18 years ago, all you did was walk
through a metal detector (whose sensitivity wasn't set all that high), and on
the plane you go.

------
josephpmay
The technology is really just being piloted here in a low-risk application.

Everyone commenting here is right that it really doesn’t save that much time
when boarding a plane, but think of where else it could save time.

(I probably shouldn’t go into details even though I never signed an NDA, so I
guess I technically could talk about it)

------
noer
Is the scanning of boarding passes really the thing that slows down boarding?
They rarely pause between groups because of a line of people getting scanned.
It's more often that the line of people waiting to get onto the plane has
stretched too far down the jetbridge.

------
jandrese
I'm really surprised they were able to cut boarding time in half with this, my
experience is that the gate isn't the bottleneck, it's little old ladies with
50lb carryons struggling to get them into the overhead bin and blocking the
aisle.

------
gumby
On a full flight there's really no need to check at all. If too many people
board you'll catch it when the spurious passenger tries to take a paid
passenger's seat.

And if identity actually mattered (hint: it doesn't), well it's already been
"screened" via the purchase and TSA checkpoint tests.

Planes flew for decades without any matching of passengers to tickets, and
tickets were frequently resold (especially unused legs) via classified ads and
later eBay. The airlines were delighted when the government (without any
evidence to justify it) told them to start matching people to tickets.

~~~
jahewson
Planes also flew for decades without locks on the cockpit doors, but that
doesn’t make it a good idea in the modern world.

~~~
Macha
How many tragedies have been enabled by suicidal pilots + the locked doors? I
know of at least one case in the Alps and pretty sure there was another in
India recently enough?

I'm not sure they come out that far ahead really, though obviously the
incidents they were designed to counter are bigger and more headline grabbing.

------
toomanybeersies
It seems like this system has been designed with privacy in mind, after the
pilot program, they won't store your image after the comparison. The only
question is will it remain that way?

------
pimmen
According to the Geneva Convention, refugees don't need a visa or travel
documents like passports to travel (to make it purposefully more difficult to
mess with persecuted people, like Germany did by stamping a "J" in the
passport of Jewish citizens so it would be easier for countries who didn't
want them to refuse them). I have fears that widespread adoption of systems
like this could make air travel for refugees inaccessible if governments
really want to.

------
admax88q
> For Thea Ottersen of Norway, privacy was not a major concern, as the general
> procedure doesn’t differ much from what she has come to expect from American
> airport security.

Conditioning works.

~~~
gruez
I wouldn't be too cynical. "privacy was not a major concern" might just mean
that she still thinks it's a privacy violation, but it's not such a big
violation to warrant boycotting trips to the US. That is, she knows she's
sacrificing privacy to visit the US and has already accepted it. Consider an
alternative story:

headline: "china blocks all access to all foreign media websites"

> For John Smith of United States, censorship was not a major concern, as the
> practice doesn’t differ much from what she has come to expect from Chinese
> censorship.

Doesn't mean that the same John Smith isn't going to be up in arms if the FCC
starts censoring news websites in the US.

------
jupiter90000
Tangent, but I thought Dulles Airport's "moon buggies" felt super weird to
have to go onto after a long international flight. It felt like I was loaded
into an armored personnel carrier or something.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_lounge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_lounge)

------
csomar
> The process eliminates the need for an airline employee to manually check
> every boarding pass and passport while boarding a plane.

Do they really do that? I mean in most airport? And in Dubai (dxb) you just
scan the barcode on your boarding pass and board the plane. No one checks your
identity.

~~~
psychometry
Domestic U.S.? No one checks passports. International? Probably. Scanning a
boarding pass takes very little time, so I don't see this as a big benefit to
travelers.

------
amelius
I don't remember which airport it was, but I remember seeing a facial
recognition scanner where the camera first physically moves up/down to match
the height of the person (which takes a few seconds), and then takes a photo.
Quite a ridiculous system if you ask me.

~~~
Macha
Sounds like EU passport control.

------
jeltz
Most European airports only scan your boarding card for flights within
Schengen and do not check any ID, and many of them let you scan it yourself.

------
diebeforei485
As long as false flags get sent to a human gate agent standing right there who
can make manual approvals, I fail to see why anyone traveling internationally
would object to this. I sure as heck want everyone else on the plane with me
to be compared against their photograph.

From a legal standpoint, domestic travel is different (and there should be
open debate in Congress before they make a decision there). But I fully
support facial recognition for international travel and other immigration
benefits.

~~~
wahern

      I sure as heck want everyone else on the plane with me to be compared against their photograph.
    

Why? I'm sure there's nefarious activity that could be prevented, I'm just
struggling to identify activities that would make be feel (let alone actually
be) unsafe on an airplane as a _practical_ matter, and without doning a screen
writer's hat.

I'm assuming weapons are already adequately checked. And if not I'm not sure
how facial recognition would appreciably help in this regard. Sure, maybe 12
bad guys enter the system though 12 airports with lax security, then all board
the same flight at a major hub in a manner that circumvents analytics that
searches for suspected bad guys flying together. But that already makes some
dubious assumptions, such as the degree of efficacy in the system looking for
suspected bad guys traveling together.

For most of air travel hijackings and bombings were incredibly common. We all
but solved that by the 1980s by physically screening for weapons and suspect
material, not by pretending we could predict people's behavior.

~~~
diebeforei485
IME questions like this typically come from people who don't deal with the
bureaucracy of applying for visas very often, if at all.

You assume fear of being bombed or hijacked, but it's really to make
international travel easier and more efficient.

Lack of a reliable way to verify identity is a major reason why applicants for
admission (or applicants for a visa) are assumed "guilty until proven
innocent", and a ton of people are denied visas (or denied entry) every day on
the slightest reasons as a result.

Being able to verify someone identity biometrically makes international travel
and immigration more trustworthy, which makes it politically more palatable to
make the lives of travelers and immigrants easier.

And doing this on outbound flights is no different from doing it on inbound
flights - from the host government's perspective, they need to know when
people enter and leave.

~~~
wahern
But this has nothing to do with ports of entry or consular offices. It has to
do with boarding at the gate. 99% accuracy is not remotely accurate enough to
even begin replacing personnel at sensitive entry points.

And consider that to the extent you automate security you permit automating
measures to subvert the system. The reported accuracy of these solutions
describe efficacy for typical use cases; they're not a measure of resilience
to attack, which is what people often assume.

Again, I'm not saying these things don't have their uses. Security just isn't
one of them unless they're merely part of a larger, cohesive system (e.g. used
to verify efficacy of auditing and reporting systems). In fact, they may
_decrease_ security if you rely on them as strong security measures.

~~~
diebeforei485
Outbound and inbound verification are sides of the same coin, as you need both
in order to reliably track overstays. Congress has recognized this since 1996
when they first passed legislation requiring biometric entry-exit, and
multiple times since then. The exit part of that has never really been
implemented except for small trials.

It really isn't about replacing personnel (that another strawman you've made
up, after the strawman about weapons). Rather - instead of humans (TSA agent +
gate agent), it's now a human and a machine. It helps that the kind of
mismatches made by CNN's are generally different from those made by humans.

> And consider that to the extent you automate security you permit automating
> measures to subvert the system.

I'm not sure what you mean by automating measures to subvert the system -
there are financial and physical barriers (you'd need to get a hundred people
or more into an airport, and buy them all plane tickets) If you have that
level of resources, you're better off bribing CBP officers[1].

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/customs-border-agents-
mexica...](https://www.businessinsider.com/customs-border-agents-mexican-
cartel-smuggling-2016-11)

------
devy
I was at ATL 2 weeks ago. Many Delta's boarding gates were also equipped with
facial recognition boarding cameras too.

------
village-idiot
Creepy.

------
marty331
There is no way in hell this is a good thing for US Citizens. First it's good
for doing your boarding pass but then it will be used for identifying people
on the street, maybe at a protest and then locking them away if they disagree
with the political party in power. FML

~~~
camillomiller
It's incredible how eager people are to give away freedom and privacy in
exchange for a little convenience.

------
makecheck
This is sort of “hurry up and wait”; _every_ time I feel like I got through
the gate quickly, I just end up in line on the jet bridge or waiting 2 minutes
for someone to fish every variety of item out of their overhead bin while the
whole plane waits for them.

The cause of slower boarding is BAGGAGE FEES. Airlines are penny-pinching,
people bring everything on board to compensate, and struggling with luggage is
slow as hell.

~~~
r_c_a_d
People take bags onboard to avoid fees, yes, but mostly because airlines lose
hold luggage (or send it to the wrong place) and even if they don't you have
to go and wait for it at the carousel.

The last flight I took, there were too many people taking onbord luggage and
mine got taken off me and put in the hold :(

