Barcelona's El Prat Airport has deployed biometric border controls featuring facial and fingerprint recognition in a bid to accelerate passenger throughput.Spain's Minister for Home Affairs, Jorge Fernández Díaz, officially inaugurated the new Smart Borders System last week.In the days since, Alicante's Elche airport has also revealed plans to install a biometric passport control system.The Spanish Government website, La Moncloa, reported that the Automated Border Crossing Systems (ABC) will forms part of the Smart Borders Programme which is co-financed by the European Commission and is aimed at integrating all air, sea and land borders.The system is designed for the use of all citizens of the European Economic Area who are of legal age and bearers of an e-passport or e-ID card, and will not only speed up passenger border crossing times but will also increase security and facilitate interconnection with other systems.The system checks the validity of the electronic identification document, extracts image and fingerprint information, captures a live image and fingerprint of the passenger in question and compares them with the information taken from the electronic identification document, and then checks the police databases to identify any flagged passengers.The ABC System is already in operation at the airports of Madrid, Barcelona, Girona, Palma de Mallorca, Alicante, Malaga and Tenerife South, and was also recently launched at the Port of Algeciras and at the land border crossing between La Línea de la Concepción and Gibraltar. A total of 127 automated identification booths have been installed so far, 24 of them at Barcelona-El Prat Airport, where there are 12 in Terminal 1 and another 12 in Terminal 2.
Barcelona airport deploys biometric passport control
