SITA Transforms Passenger Experience at Beijing Capital Int. Airport

SITA has completed its most extensive biometric deployment to date and installed completely new contactless experience for passengers traveling through Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA).

As the busiest airport in China and the second busiest in the world, BCIA has completely automated the entire passenger journey using SITA technology – from check-in and bag drop through to immigration, security, and finally boarding.

Passengers only need to enroll once during check-in, then experience a seamless journey through the airport enabled by facial recognition. Improved processing efficiency means shorter queuing time and more social distancing for all passengers. An added benefit during the COVID19 era is that the process removes the need to touch any airport equipment, reducing the risk of infection.

SITA Smart Path has already proven that it can significantly speed up passenger processing at BCIA, processing over 400 passengers boarding an Airbus A380 in less than 20 minutes.

Beyond passenger processing, SITA Smart Path also enables hands-free and touchless Duty-Free payment, removing the need to retrieve and show a boarding pass at check-out.

The SITA Smart Path solution is the largest rollout of its kind and enables passengers to glide through the airport using only their face as their boarding pass. The deployment included the implementation of over 600 biometric checkpoints through the airport including 250 lanes of automatic gates, 80 kiosks, and 30 self-bag drop stations which will process passengers from international flights.

The biometric technology is currently activated across multiple checkpoints at BCIA including manual check-in, self-service check-in, bag drop, restricted access, security, and boarding.

Sumesh Patel, SITA’s President of APAC, said, “Automation is more important than ever in this COVID19 environment to better enable social distancing and passenger flow without compromising processing times. The BCIA implementation is our most comprehensive deployment of next-generation technology and signposts growing interest from the market to automate and optimize airport operations through smart technology. With Duty-Free shopping now also optimized by SITA Smart Path we’re beginning to uncover the full potential of biometrics to boost passenger safety, convenience and confidence, in turn helping the air transport industry to recover and evolve.”

BCIA is the largest airport in China, with passenger volume exceeding 100 million between 2018 and 2020. It is positioned as the international hub airport in the overall design of the Jing-Jin-Ji airports group. To date, it serves 31 domestic airlines and 62 foreign airlines, with 133 international routes, and 161 domestic routes.

Airports, Air Travel and COVID19 - Exclusive Interview with SITA's President of Asia Pacific, Sumesh Patel (July 2020)

See latest Travel News, Video Interviews, Podcasts and other news regarding: COVID19, SITA, Beijing, Biometrics.