Soon, you will no longer need a passport to travel through Dubai airport

Continuing its strategy of deploying its biometric check-in services, Dubai Airport with the support of Emirates Airlines recently unveiled at GITEX the largest technology exhibition in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, a new system called “biometric passenger travel”. Thanks to the latter, Dubai airport will soon be able to abandon paper documents such as passports and boarding passes and thus facilitate check-in formalities for its passengers. 

With the facial recognition used by this new system, pre-checked passengers whose faces and irises have been scanned at least once will be able to check-in, immigrate, enter the Emirates lounge and board their aircraft without having to take out their passports or boarding passes. 

This is a non-stop trip to Dubai, as passengers will no longer need to show their passport or identity card. The traveller can get to the terminal simply by showing his face

Dubai Airport, an airport on the way to the future

While only one pilot project has so far been announced by the Dubai Passport and Visa Service (GDRFA), the biometric passenger travel system could eventually become a world first in passport control, as passengers would simply cross a tunnel and be “cleared” by immigration authorities without human intervention. In order to protect their passengers’ information, the GDRFA specified that all biometric information would be securely stored on the GDRFA system for future travel.

Dubai Airport had already installed “smart tunnels” in its Terminal 3 in 2018, allowing business and first-class passengers to cross identity control zones in 15 seconds.