Life Safety & Security January 2021

News Update
Heathrow installs biometric gates to improve customer
experience while maintaining security standards
With around 80 million passengers flowing through it each year,
Heathrow Airport’s new dormakaba biometric self-boarding gates are reportedly supporting the
management of passenger flow, while keeping security standards high.
With numerous access and entrance control
points across its five terminals for customers
to contend with, Simon Wilcox, Heathrow
Passenger Automation Programme Lead,
recognised the need to handle passenger flow
in the most efficient way possible – without
compromising on security.
The automation programme specified required
implementing biometric gates that would bring
facial recognition to each access point of a
departing passenger’s journey. The new
technology would use facial recognition at
check-in, bag drops, security lanes and
boarding gates to create a “seamless
experience for passengers” walking through
the airport. And, with a pandemic highlighting
the need for improved health and safety
requirements, less physical contact and face to
face engagement between staff and
passengers would be required.
When looking for the initial self-boarding gates,
the team at London Heathrow Airport
contacted dormakaba. After reviewing the
requirements for the airport, dormakaba
recommended and supplied its HSB-M03 Self
Boarding Gates and PaxCheck Self Boarding
Solution. dormakaba also provided its project
management services, and the airport has
taken out an on-going service contract for
third- and fourth-line support.
Andy Carter, Contracting Business Sales and
Operations Director at dormakaba UK said:
“The final project looks to have over 400 gates
installed across the whole airport. Each one
has dormakaba software on the gates,
incorporating Heathrow’s biometric data, as
well as a connection to the management
server.”
This challenge of complex integration was
overcome by the close collaboration between
dormakaba engineers and the project team
with London Heathrow Airport, as well as
suppliers for third party products and systems.
Currently, Terminals 2A, 2B and 5A have been
completed, with Terminal’s 3, 4, 5B and 5C
scheduled for completion by the end of 2020.
Completed terminals now benefit from a selfboarding
solution that adheres to all the latest
relevant security and build standards.
Across these completed terminals,
passengers present their boarding pass to a
reader on the gate, which then scans and
checks the pass with the airline’s Departure
Control System (DCS) and either opens or
remains closed depending on the response.
For passengers departing on domestic flights,
the gate also uses facial recognition
technology, with its installation being
partnered with the airport’s chosen biometric
provider Atkins, to verify that the passenger
boarding the aircraft either entered the airport
through the front door or has been through a
UK Border Force check since arriving on an
international flight.
The self-boarding solution also includes a
web-based administration programme,
PaxCheck, that allows for management of the
gates and sends reports of passengers and
when they passed through – allowing for faster
boarding and fewer staff. This also means
airport and airline management can have live
stats on the numbers of passengers passing
through the gates in any given period, to ensure
compliance with government and travel
guidelines.
Simon Wilcox says: “We’re incredibly
impressed by the use of dormakaba products
in the integration of our terminal upgrades.
“Engineers and the dedicated project team
worked closely with us and other suppliers to
ensure a high-quality delivery, to schedule. The
gates have been excellent reliability wise, and
the positive feedback from passengers has
been outstanding. dormakaba’s support team
also respond incredibly quickly to any queries
that ourselves or the third-party IT providers
may have, which made the process of
implementing the biometric integration much
smoother, and the bespoke self-boarding
solution allows us to update airport and airline
branding and mode of operation in real-time.”
24
January - 2021