Thales continues to improve travellers experience at Spanish Airports with border gate deployments

• Three more Spanish airports – Reus, Girona-Costa Brava and Tenerife Sur benefit from new Automated Border Control (ABC) gate deployments for improved and speed up the process of border management and traveller experience.
• The Thales ABC System for border control incorporates facial recognition and automatic document verification. This will significantly streamline the border control process.
• Thales smart gate units are compact and feature modular design. They enable effective passenger processing, significantly reducing waiting times for tourists and therefore providing a more pleasant travel experience.

Earlier this year Thales started to deploy smart border gates in several Spanish airports (Bilbao, Valencia, Fuerteventura) and now continues the expansion with more than 30 additional gates in Reus, Girona-Costa Brava and Tenerife Sur – coming this summer. These new deployments offer a notable improvement for the travel experience

With its extensive experience in smart access systems for airports, Thales has developed the ABC border control system in collaboration with Inetum, a European leader in digital solutions and services, who implement manual verifiers and real-time monitoring. The new system will significantly enhance passenger flow by boosting their processing capacity while facilitating social distancing. The design combines software expertise in document verification and biometric authentication with a modular hardware solution.

The companies are jointly responsible for the integration and installation at different Spanish airports and which ensures greater flexibility. With faster passenger processing which will speed up the passage of travelers. This gain in speed is due to controls that are performed autonomously.

These improvements come without lowering security: in fact, the opposite is true as the smart access is provided with facial recognition software that verifies the passenger’s identity.  Moreover, the units are designed in such a way that the passengers intuitively look at the camera during the process, enabling instant capture of their face.

The ABC system incorporates state-of-the-art electronic passport readers whose authentication software can be updated from a central security centre to counter the latest threats. They also enable additional security controls by police officers if deemed necessary.

As the new gates do not require physical contact from airport personnel or police officers, they contribute to improve the safety of passengers and workers in light of COVID-19.

“Thales’ eGates support the growing interest of airports in expanding their capacity when the options of building new terminals are limited” says Youzec Kurp, VP Identity and Biometric Solutions at Thales. “The system increases potential passenger numbers by requiring less space for installation. In Spain, more than 120 Thales ABC Gates will be deployed before the end of the year.”