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

The busiest airport in China and the second busiest in the world, BCIA has completely automated the passenger journey – from check-in and bag drop through to immigration, security, and finally boarding. Passengers only need to enrol once during check-in, then experience a seamless journey through the airport enabled by facial recognition.

The resulting processing efficiency means shorter queuing times and more social distancing for all passengers and, with no need to touch any airport equipment, risks of COVID-19 infection are further reduced.

SITA Smart Path can process over 400 passengers boarding an Airbus A380 in less than 20 minutes and also enables hands-free and touchless duty-free payment, removing the need to retrieve and show a boarding pass at check out.

The deployment includes 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.

Sumesh Patel, SITA’s President of APAC, said: “Automation is more important than ever in this COVID-19 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 optimise airport operations through smart technology.

BCIA had passenger volumes 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.