In Dubai, travelers now pass in a blink of an eye

Dubai’s airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, can already feel surreal, with its cavernous duty-free stores, artificial palm trees, gleaming terminals, water cascades and near-Arctic levels of air conditioning.

Now, the key east-west transit hub is rolling out another addition from the realm of science fiction — an iris scanner that verifies one’s identity and eliminates the need for any human interaction when entering or leaving the country.

It’s the latest artificial intelligence program the United Arab Emirates has launched amid the coronavirus pandemic, contact-less technology the government promotes as helping to stem the spread of the virus.

Dubai’s airport started offering the program to all passengers last month. Travelers step up to an iris scanner after checking in, give it a good look and breeze through passport control within seconds. Gone are the days of paper tickets or even phone apps.

In recent years, airports across the world have accelerated their use of timesaving facial recognition technology. But Dubai’s iris scan improves on that, connecting the iris data to the country’s facial recognition databases so the passenger needs no identifying documents or boarding pass.

The unusual partnership between long-haul carrier Emirates, and the Dubai immigration office integrates the data and carries travelers from check-in to boarding in one fell swoop.

“The future is coming,” said Major-General Obaid Mehayer Bin Suroor, deputy director of the General Directorate of Residency and Foreign Affairs. “Now, all the procedures have become ‘smart,’ around five to six seconds.”

 Iris scans, requiring people to stare into a camera as though they’re offering a fingerprint, have become more widespread worldwide in recent years as questions have arisen over the accuracy of facial recognition technology.