If you’re a TSA PreCheck member traveling on United Airlines via Chicago’s O’Hare or Los Angeles international airports, life just got a bit easier.
United recently updated its website to show that “Touchless ID” technology, which lets users go through security just by scanning their face and without having to show a physical ID or a boarding pass, is now available at those two major hubs for TSA Pre users.
Additionally, United passengers at O’Hare can use their face at a new bag-drop shortcut.
To enroll in United’s Touchless ID, a passenger needs to scan their passport and add their Known Traveler Number (KTN) in the United app. The passenger then needs to check in for their flight on the mobile app in order to opt-in and give United permission to use your facial scan as an ID.
Once at the airport, a passenger would only need to scan their face at new Touchless ID kiosks.
For now, Touchless ID at United is only available for customers on single-passenger reservations who are at least 18 years old. And the bag-drop feature at O’Hare is still in a testing phase, meaning agents will still check IDs.
United says it plans to continue rolling out Touchless ID to more bag drop counters, security checkpoints, and boarding gates in the future.
The carrier’s move to touchless follows Delta Air Lines, which has already deployed similar technology at its hubs in Atlanta, Detroit and New York’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia international airports.
According to The Points Guy travel website managing editor Clint Henderson, there are already dedicated check-in lanes for touchless at these airports for Delta flyers.
“The agents working at the TSA PreCheck and Clear lines told me to use a new special lane for biometrics that allowed me to skip ahead of both the regular PreCheck and the separate Clear lanes,” Henderson said in a TPG post. “After one minute, the TSA agent waved me over. I simply showed my face in front of a camera, and the agent told me to go ahead to the screening machines. There was no wait.”
In November, the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA’s parent agency, announced it is hoping to roll out an entirely “self-service” screening option that bypasses TSA agents entirely. This involves the use “pods” that combine facial screening and baggage scanning; currently, this program is being tested at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas.
On its website, TSA says it does not store images captured by facial recognition technology “except for a limited period of time for testing and evaluation purposes.” The agency says it retains personal identifying information only for as long as is necessary to fulfill the specified purposes of its biometric technology pilots.
