THE ASCENT OF DIGI YATRA

Even as the recently introduced biometricsbased service at India's airports sees some teething troubles, adopters are growing like few government services have.

- ANJULI BHARGAVA

BACK IN 2015, after building the landmark airport terminal, the team at Bangalore Airport International Ltd. (BIAL) was looking at ways to improve convenience for fliers, the airport’s mainstay. How could the experience be made better, more seamless, and less stressful?

Several ideas were put forth, but one stuck. Suresh Khadakbhavi, who was then part of the airport’s technology team, suggested a biometrics-based contactless boarding experience for fliers, without any hassle of pulling out identity cards at different entry points.

Right from balancing one’s luggage while pulling out the boarding pass or phone or Aadhaar at different check points, to keeping the boarding card safe (not crumpled or lost if one has a physical one in hand!), procedures at every stage were time consuming and cumbersome for fliers. Furthermore, depending on the threat perception at the time or the day or the city, multiple checks were introduced, sometimes even just before stepping onto the aircraft, leading to much annoyance for fliers.

The question Khadakbhavi’s paper posed was whether things can be improved and done in a manner where one could just walk through with virtually no touch points, in full safety and security, to make things more efficient and less troublesome for all.

That was when the idea of Digi Yatra — a contactless process that uses facial recognition to provide a seamless travel experience for domestic passengers — was mooted. With the help of a few biometrics OEMs, an experiment was carried out by the BIAL team with Jet Airways at the terminal for an end-to-end journey experience based on facial recognition, practically contactless, especially for those carrying only hand luggage. Feedback from passengers was video recorded. Most wanted this scaled up across airports.