German fingerprint biometrics specialist Dermalog is poised to begin a trial of its system at an undisclosed South American airport in a deal that has come as a result of the US terrorist attacks.
The Hamburg-based company's sales and marketing manager Olaf Jüttner says that agreement has been reached with a South American government to trial the system, initially at a single airport. Jüttner says more details about the agreement, and the identity of the airport, will be disclosed next month. Rio de Janeiro is believed to be the airport involved. If the trial is successful, this could result in a "multi-million dollar" deal to equip the country's other major airports.
As with iris and face recognition systems, fingerprint comparison is receiving considerable attention from the aviation industry as a biometric security system. "We have seen an increasing amount of interest since 11 September," says Jüttner.
Dermalog has developed a smart card containing fingerprint data which has been adopted as an identification system by Brunei for its citizens and visitors. Jüttner says this same technology can be used at airports for immigration or check-in.
"At check-in it would take 10 seconds to scan and download a traveller's fingerprint data to a smart card or convert it to a 2D barcode and print onto a boarding card," says Jüttner. "It can then be used at the gate to verify that the passenger is the one who checked in."
Like the other biometric systems, fingerprint smart cards could replace magna-stripe cards as a more secure air-side access control.
Source: Flight International
