No more ID? Air Canada rolls out facial recognition tech at Vancouver airport

Air Canada is poised to roll out facial recognition technology at the gate, making it the first Canadian airline to deploy the software in a bid to streamline the boarding process.

Starting Tuesday, customers who board most domestic Air Canada flights at Vancouver International Airport will be able to walk onto the plane without presenting any physical pieces of identification, such as a passport or driver's licence, the country's largest airline said.

Participants in the program, which is voluntary, can upload a photo of their face and a scan of their passport to the airline's app.

Launched as a pilot project in February 2023, the digital ID option is already available at Air Canada's Maple Leaf lounges in Toronto, Calgary and San Francisco. The airline plans to unveil it at other Canadian airport gates "in the near future."

Canadian carriers have been slow to adopt biometric processes, with face-matching technology already deployed by a number of U.S. airlines, overseas airports and government security agencies.

Since 2021, some Delta Air Lines customers at the Atlanta and Detroit airports have been able to check their bags, pass through security and board their flight by flashing no more than a smile. The airline expanded the technology to Los Angeles and New York City last year.

In 2023, Germany's Frankfurt Airport began to allow all airlines to use "face biometrics" from the check-in desk to the boarding gate — no physical ID involved — after introducing the technology in 2020.

As it becomes more widely used, the software, which analyzes the unique physical identifiers of a traveller's face, has raised concerns over privacy and ethics.

Some revolve around how the systems are trained and what happens when the software fails to recognize the travellers.

"It's privacy and control of the data and who gets to see the data. How are you going to eliminate the data, or how are you going to manage the flow of that data?" asked John Gradek, who teaches at McGill University’s aviation management program.

"Canada is being very cautious in deploying the technology."

He also noted the potential for job cuts opened up by a camera-equipped tablet standing in for a gate agent.

At Air Canada, the personal information in passengers' digital profiles is encrypted when it's sent and processed, and it's "used for digital ID purposes only," the carrier said. It said the info is deleted from its systems 36 hours after departure.

"In terms of privacy, that consideration has been at the forefront of the development of this technology and something that is very important to Air Canada," said spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick in an email.

He added that the technology has no links to government programs, such as Nexus, which allows pre-approved travellers to cross the border more quickly.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 28, 2024.