Building synergies between the electronic passport and passenger data: Where will mobile identification technologies take us?

The electronic passport is still underutilised in both border security and aviation processes. As a result, international passengers are often required to produce their passports for examination up to five times at the airport before boarding. This is not only time-consuming but also inefficient because most processes treat the passenger as an unknown entity. Travel document identification technology and passenger data are key tools to improve the passenger process in crowded airport hubs, which face operational constraints and diminishing public investments. To overcome space constraints and investment shortages, passport inspection and other identity assertion processes to support travel must be optimised to improve passenger flows for the benefit of both security and facilitation. This paper discusses the future of mobile travel document inspection based on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) standards at the airport border environment — a process that will be shaped by passenger data quality, biometric tools and the eventual deployment of the ICAO Digital Travel Credential (DTC). The advancement of facial recognition technology paired with airline passenger data, such as advance passenger information (API) and passenger name record (PNR), will assist identification technologies in the future to the point that the passenger can be identified at a walking pace.