Air Canada to offer facial recognition to board flights at Toronto Pearson Airport

After rolling out the feature for select flights from Vancouver International Airport to Winnipeg, Air Canada plans to offer fliers looking to board select flights from the Toronto Pearson Airport facial recognition technology for identification while boarding flights, the airline said on Tuesday.

It may be pertinent to note that Air Canada currently also offers facial recognition technology for identification to access their Air Canada Cafe at the Toronto airport.

“Many of our customers already utilize digital credentials to simplify their daily activities such as unlocking mobile phones, entering workplaces, verifying identification during financial transactions, and more…We are very excited to now take a leadership position in Canada and test digital identification using facial recognition technology to validate customer identification quickly, securely and accurately at select airport touchpoints. Participation in digital identification is voluntary. Customers choosing to use digital identification will benefit from a simplified and seamless process at the gate and when entering our Maple Leaf Lounge,” stated Craig Landry, Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer at Air Canada about the technology in a news release on Tuesday.

The soon-to-be unveiled feature is voluntary in nature, with the news release adding, “Customers who do not wish to utilize digital identification may simply board as they currently do now by presenting their boarding pass and government-issued photo ID for manual ID check and processing. Likewise, customers may elect to continue scanning their boarding cards manually as they do now to enter the Air Canada Café at Toronto Pearson.”

“Air Canada’s digital identification is strictly an optional, consent-based Air Canada program. It is not related to any government-sponsored program like NEXUS, Global Entry or US CBP Mobile Passport Control (MPC),” the news release finished.