Airports to track passengers with Micro-Chip ID tags
Pastor Dale Morgan
Airports to track passengers with Micro-Chip ID tags*
By David Millward, Transport Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:02am BST 10/04/2007
Airports plan to track passengers with radio transmitter tags to cut
delays and tighten security.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) tag
The small RFID tags attach to a passenger's boarding card when they check in
Manchester airport has carried out a six-month trial of the technology,
which used radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to track 50,000
volunteers in the airport.
The airport's head of innovation, Yemmi Agbegi, said: "It enabled us to
see how much time passengers spent airside and how efficient our
security was."
When the system is fully operational, Manchester will attach the radio
tag to a passenger's boarding card when they check in. If the scheme is
successful, it will be rolled out to other airports, including Heathrow,
within a couple of years. For passengers who printed their boarding
cards at home, the RFID tag will be stuck on the card as they pass
through security on their way to the departure lounge.
With airports running at full capacity, a single missing passenger can
cause chaos, often forcing airlines to remove all the baggage from the
hold. This, in turn, can lead to the plane missing its take-off slot.
"Once a plane has missed its slot, then it is sent to the back of the
queue," a BAA spokesman explained.
For example, a missing passenger at London City Airport, which is a
fraction of the size of Heathrow, delayed a flight to Frankfurt by 90
minutes.
Tagging passengers could also be used to improve security, making it
possible to detect anyone entering an unauthorised area. Companies are
working on technology which would trigger an alarm if a device did not
move at all, indicating it had been dropped or lost, or if the tag was
removed from the boarding card.
But the main benefit of the system is seen as a way of making airports
run more smoothly. The Manchester trial was just one of a series of
experiments being carried out across Europe.
"It won't really intrude on people's lives," said Dr Paul Brennan, of
University College London, who has been involved in another set of radio
tagging trials, known as OpTag.
"It is intended to make sure that everybody gets to the flight in time.
Delays are costing the industry £100 million a year."
Cambridge University, in collaboration with University College London
and Swansea University, has incorporated research into tagging
passengers into a broader study of how to construct an "intelligent"
airport.
"It would allow you to do many things, especially if the tagging was
incorporated with biometric data," said Prof Richard Penty, of Cambridge
University's engineering department.
However, the project has alarmed some privacy campaigners. Sophie in 't
Veld, a Dutch Liberal MEP, has demanded reassurance about the project
from EU officials.
"Has this project been properly evaluated? Does it serve a useful
purpose? So many measures have been taken since September 11. In many
cases they are ineffective and they have not been introduced in a
democratic way."