...agents will be freed up to...deliver more proactive and thoughtful customer service
Reaccommodation?
Delta Air Lines plans to deploy four self-service bag drop machines at Minneapolis–St Paul International Airport this summer, one of which will include a facial recognition system to match those depositing bags with their passport photos. Delta senior veep of airport customer service and cargo Garth Joyce, in a canned remark, …
And those who wanted to go to Atlanta find that their bags are in Antayla (turkey)
There is another issue relating to this move that does not seem to have been thought of.
Were not airlines supposed to as questions such as
"Did you pack the bag yourself?"
"Are you carrying anything for someone other than yourself"
etc
etc
I can imagine that in order to carry this out and following the becnmark set by United, a robotic voice will ask you this and if you say No, a Cyborg will appear and after tasering you (SOP) they will cart you away to Feral Prison facing a 5-10 stretch.
But given the rulings about electronic devices on planes, won't Airports soon become the ghost towns of the 21st century?
Time to sit out front of the airport selling masks. I figure a set of three would be plenty with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Guy Fawkes. Oh how we'll LOL.
"CBP sees potential for the technology to transform the travel process, provided privacy issues can be addressed," CBP's spokesperson said, citing the opportunity to reduce the need to produce documents while traveling.
Spokesperson? Sounds more like a stand up comic.
So is speads up the baggage drop off... yet check in and security are the biggest time waster. I tend to agree that this is more about bottom line and fewer employees than "customer service". You still have to be there 2-3 hours early for your flight... I can remember being told to get to the airport 30 minutes before a flight and still having time to spare, but this was before 9/11 and all the security theatre.
Why not chip all the passengers? They do it with cats. They never complain.
They effectively do. It's just said chip is in your passport, not subdermal.
Having used facial recognition a lot at UK airports, I can confirm it is woeful in terms of reliability.
Heck, I had a photo taken a mere 3 days prior to using one (brand new passport, fast-tracked) and it still wasn't capable of recognising me 2 times in 3. (I know what I'm doing, I'm not a clueless first timer who can't understand that they need to keep still for more than 3 seconds to let the system process what it is seeing)
I'm not really sure why there is a specific need to verify a passenger against their passport though for a baggage check. The authentication of the passport should be enough - as the passenger will be verified against the passport prior to boarding, and if they aren't, the bag doesn't fly anyway. So why even bother wasting time with an 18% unreliable system when you can do away with it completely? Match passport (or PNR, or e-ticket number) to bag and be done with it. (Like we do all over Europe.)
Oh yeah, but of course I'm forgetting that if that were the case, the NSA wouldn't get an update of your particulars and several new photographic angles of you every time you fly...
I don't see the reason for the snark.
Interacting less with the check-in clerks will certainly improve the customer experience.
I've often had a nice word or two while efficiently checking a bag. But I've forgotten all of those times. I do remember the many times pointlessly waiting in line while the few clerks are all taking ten minutes per passenger re-booking tickets on 13 leg flights to East Timor. Then when I get to the front my 30 second check-in is delayed by being scolded for checking a bag two minutes late.
I loved the improvement when the airlines switched to check-in kiosks when flying with no bags. I prefer to fly at less busy times. All of the kiosks remain open, while there might be only a minimal check-in staff.
facial recognition to wave you through e.g. Stansted? I seem to recall having to wait in a massive long line just to grimace at a webcam that tried to match my face to me 9 years ago, only to fail and have the border chimp watching two lines wave me through. Compare that to Norway's log cabin at the edge of the runway, which deplaned and processed the whole lot in about 10 minutes flat...
A NIST study [PDF] published in March found that facial recognition systems in a boarding gate scenario misidentify 6 per cent of the people in a 480-person data set, and 18 per cent of people in a 48,000-person data set.
This figure isn't useful unless you compare the machine to the human accuracy rate.
Two former colleagues (one male, t'other female) were travelling and managed to get their passports mixed up at checkin. They let her on the plane with his passport, but decided that he didn't look like a woman!