ATL's Chief Information Officer Chris Crist discusses biometric facial recognition at the American Association of Airport Executives conference and expo.
ATLANTA—Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) will expand facial recognition for boarding international flights beyond Delta Air Lines to all flights departing the U.S. from the airport starting in July.
The full rollout is expected to be completed by November, allowing passengers departing the U.S. from ATL to board aircraft via biometric facial recognition rather than showing documents.
“Whenever you board an international flight, the idea is you no longer have to pull out a passport, you don’t have to show a ticket, you don’t have to do anything,” ATL Chief Information Officer Chris Crist said at the annual American Association of Airport Executives (AAAE) conference and expo held June 8-10 in Atlanta. “You just show up. Your face is scanned. You’re allowed on the flight. That saves us so many seconds per passenger.”
Delta has used the biometric method of boarding international flights in conjunction with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for years at ATL, and it will now be extended to all airlines operating at ATL’s 40 international gates. ATL-based Delta’s international passenger market share at the airport in 2024 was 76%.
“As soon as a passenger checks in with the airline, the airline tells us who is getting on the plane,” according to an explanation of the facial recognition boarding program on CBP’s website. “At that point, we find all the photographs we have of the people on the flight, and we pool them, and then segment them into individual photo galleries for each passenger.”
Photos come from passports, visas and biometrics gathered from passengers flying internationally on previous trips. “CBP already has a collection of photos for biometric comparison,” the agency explains. “People have already provided their photographs to the government for travel purposes ... If there are 300 people on the flight, we find every photograph we have of those 300 people. Generally, that means we will have about 1,500 pictures because we have multiple photos of each passenger.”
CBP adds: “Then, as the passenger boards the flight, he or she has his or her picture taken. That photo is compared to his or her individual gallery of photos rather than comparing it to a billion photos that are in [the Homeland Security Department’s] biometric database. The matching is done in real time because it’s a small file and it’s accurate.”
The facial recognition boarding process was first tested on Delta flights from ATL to Tokyo and Mexico City in 2016 and later was extended to all of the airline’s international departures from its home hub. While ATL and Delta see biometric boarding as creating efficiency and saving time in the boarding process, CBP utilizes the program to identify people in the U.S. without legal documentation.
Through the first four months of 2025, 2.3 million passengers boarded international flights at ATL, up 5.5% year-over-year. With those numbers, saving even seconds per passenger adds up to “an immense efficiency opportunity” for processing passengers, Crist said. For the 2024 full year, 7.3 million passengers boarded departing international flights at ATL.
Crist emphasized that ATL and Delta are not retaining the facial recognition data. “We’re not storing anything locally,” he told Aviation Week. “So, you don’t need to worry that we’re creating something new in that specific moment” when the passenger boards, he said.
Once the photo is compared to the CBP database and the passenger boards, it is “like you never existed” as far as the airline and airport are concerned, Crist said.
He noted a passenger can opt out of the program and board using traditional documents, but most passengers want the convenience of boarding via a fast photo. Crist anticipates that facial recognition will eventually be widely utilized for all airport processing points.
“My prediction is that we will continue to sacrifice privacy for convenience,” he said. “We’re going to continue to sacrifice privacy for security, safety and convenience at airports. It’s going to be like it was before 9/11. You’re going to be able to walk through the facility without having to do a thing. You come in, you go to your gate, you board your flight. You don’t have to stop anywhere.”
This will mean yielding privacy, he said. “For this to happen, we need [acceptance from passengers] that there would be a recognition of who you are as soon as you come into the airport—we know who you are,” Crist explained. “We know why you’re there. We recognize you through [facial recognition]. We recognize the objects you’re holding. We recognize what’s in your bag, everything to the point of when you board.”
ATL was the world’s busiest airport in 2024, handling 108.1 million passengers, up 3.3% year-over-year. This total included 14.6 international passengers.
ATL Managing Director Ricky Smith, speaking at the AAAE conference, noted the airport has already added 10 international routes in 2025. The next international route launch will come on July 2, when Etihad Airways opens 4X-weekly Airbus A350 service between Abu Dhabi and ATL. The airport connects to 80 international destinations in total.
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