Dulles Airport Surprises Passengers with Facial-Recognition Boarding

Post by jtbayly » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #79

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-scanning in supermarkets was supposedly all about speeding checkout as a benefit to the consumer. This is about speeding boarding - that's the marketing friendly benefit to be shouted about. In actuality supermarket self-scanning is often slower than a traditional checkout queue. Particularly when items require staff authorisation. I expect this to be no better than traditional boarding in most cases. The real b…

Per item? Sure. For small numbers of items, counting time spent waiting? Heck no, I regularly get through self-checkout much faster than people who get into a regular queue, in no small part because there's often a few times more self-checkout scanners than there are open checkouts. When you have a full cart or two, the speedier scanning at a traditional checkout pays off. But usually both are available, not just sel…

Post by mdorazio » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #131

Groxx wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per item? Sure. For small numbers of items, counting time spent waiting? Heck no, I regularly get through self-checkout much faster than people who get into a regular queue, in no small part because there's often a few times more self-checkout scanners than there are open checkouts. When you have a full cart or two, the speedier scanning at a traditional checkout pays off. But usually both are available, not just sel…

That’s not the right comparison. What you want to compare is how long it takes at a staffed queue vs an unstaffed one once you get to the front of the line (for the same purchase). Things might be faster now with the unmanned ones, but the contention is that that’s only because they opened more checkout terminals. Granted, they wouldnt have done that with staffed ones because of the increased expense, but let’s not g…

Post by csomar » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:41 PM UTC

Post by rtkwe » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:44 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #133

jtbayly wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not the right comparison. What you want to compare is how long it takes at a staffed queue vs an unstaffed one once you get to the front of the line (for the same purchase). Things might be faster now with the unmanned ones, but the contention is that that’s only because they opened more checkout terminals. Granted, they wouldnt have done that with staffed ones because of the increased expense, but let’s not g…

This seems like a faulty comparison. Space for registers is naturally limited. A single traditional register is replaced by 3 self-checkouts at my local grocery stores. Usually they opt for 6x self checkout replacing two traditional registers, manned by a single employee who can help with problems. In these cases it's not a question of staffing, but of space and the increase in space efficiency.

Post by gok » Tue, Sep 11, 2018, 1:46 PM UTC

blitmap wrote: post #130

gok wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say that a boarding pass is “something you have” in a security sense is absurd. I can print your boarding pass merely by knowing your name and where you’re going. A biometric check (backed by a paper ID check) is a dramatic security upgrade over that.

Passports are printed similar to currency. There are many features in them that are hard to replicate. It can be done but not easily, so it does fit the bill of "something you have" to authenticate. Not nearly as secure as a yubikey or an rsa token, but oh well.