Clamoring For Registered Traveler
- By Brent Dirks
- Aug 06, 2007
Anyone who frequents an airport knows that the once pleasurable travel option can sometimes turn into a nightmare. With cutbacks in the airline industry and more and more passengers crammed onto fewer planes going to an airport can be an exercise in frustration -- and that’s even before stepping in to the security line.
And if a recent survey from FLO Corp. and the Business Traveler Coalition is any indication, the traveling public is in overwhelming favor of the Registered Traveler program. It’s beginning to pop up across the United States to help make at least one part of the air travel experience an easier proposition.
The program was designed to improve the security screening process and reduce waits in those ever-present security lines.
The process is simple. A traveler begins by pre-registering on a Registered Traveler service provider’s Web site. Next is a trip to an enrollment center, usually at an airport. During this stage, the traveler’s ID documents are scanned while a picture is taken of the face. The person’s iris and fingerprints also are scanned for use as biometric identifiers.
Once the card is received, it can be currently used at eight airports across the United States. At the airport, a traveler inserts their card into a Registered Traveler kiosk and presents a biometric (finger or eye) to confirm identity. Once confirmed, a traveler can then proceed to a specific security line just for the program, cutting down often horrendous wait times at the checkpoints.
From the survey, more than 82 percent of respondents indicated they would like the airlines they travel on to embrace Registered Traveler. Eighty percent of respondents would pay $99 for a program membership in return for consistently expeditious security checkpoint processing, without any other in-lane benefits, such as not having to remove shoes, laptops and coats.
"Travelers are indicating that not having to remove shoes or laptops would be a convenience,” said FLO Corp. CEO Glenn Argenbright. “However, what is truly important to them is expeditious security lane processing that is predictable and consistent from airport to airport such that a business executive would not have to leave a customer's office 45 minutes early because of not knowing what to expect at an airport on any given day."
About the Author
Brent Dirks is senior editor for Security Today and Campus Security Today magazines.