ITA Airways in collaboration with SAC SpA, the Catania’s Airport management company. has launched the Face Boarding testing phase at Catania Airport.

From next July, after checking in on the web or at the airport, all passengers on the ITA Airways’ Catania-Milan flight will be able to go to the "land side" of the departures area to use the innovative Reco Welcome-Kiosk facial recognition machine. The machine will be used to associate their face with their electronic ID and boarding pass. Consequently, the passengers will easily and quickly pass through security checks and gate procedures without having to show the ID or boarding pass.

Face Boarding, through advanced technologies, provides for the integration of computer vision and video analysis techniques, in order to implement biometric verification and identification scenarios. This technology is based on 'face recognition', capable of analysing in real time the travellers’ faces and let them pass through the various security check-points until they reach the boarding gate at Catania airport, in 'hands free' mode i.e. without showing an identity document and/or boarding pass, greatly facilitating and speeding up the boarding process.

One of the pillars of ITA Airways is digitalisation and the development of new technologies at the service of the flagship’s company’s costumers, and this project reflects it.