LVSteve
Member
Took a quick trip to Mexico over the holiday weekend. Leaving Vegas was the way to go, as every man and his dog was coming here.
At the terminal the ID checkpoints were fully manned, as were the baggage scanners.
ID guy scanned our boarding passes and passports. Remember this. Baggage and body scanner area required shoes off, but nothing to needed to come out of our bags. I did not here anything about laptops, but it could be I just missed it. Not carrying a laptop or tablet probably meant I wasn't listening too hard.
Went to the gate area and grabbed a snack. For some reason I cannot recall, my wife wanted to speak to the gate agent. While we were there, the girl did another passport vs boarding pass check. Shortly afterwards, she was requesting multiple passengers come and do the same. Hmm.
Real surprise came when we were boarding. Instead of scanning our boarding passes, we had to stand in turn at a camera which then said yea or nay. Seems like facial recognition was being trialed/used. This was not a huge hit with habitual hat wearers and those who love fashion statement glasses when indoors. Tough.
Leaving Mexico was mostly easy with security not even asking for shoe removal. Boarding was back to scanning the paper slip or smartphone.
Another surprise awaited us on arrival in Vegas. We have had cameras at the INS booths for some years, but now it seems that they are linked to a facial recognition system. The clue was that after my wife was checked, I stood in front of the camera and the INS lady looked at a screen and said, "Oh yes, and Mr Steve," then she took my passport and looked at it. One more surprise was the lack of any staff at customs, not even the guy to ask "Are you carrying any fruit or meat?" That's a first.
At the terminal the ID checkpoints were fully manned, as were the baggage scanners.
ID guy scanned our boarding passes and passports. Remember this. Baggage and body scanner area required shoes off, but nothing to needed to come out of our bags. I did not here anything about laptops, but it could be I just missed it. Not carrying a laptop or tablet probably meant I wasn't listening too hard.Went to the gate area and grabbed a snack. For some reason I cannot recall, my wife wanted to speak to the gate agent. While we were there, the girl did another passport vs boarding pass check. Shortly afterwards, she was requesting multiple passengers come and do the same. Hmm.
Real surprise came when we were boarding. Instead of scanning our boarding passes, we had to stand in turn at a camera which then said yea or nay. Seems like facial recognition was being trialed/used. This was not a huge hit with habitual hat wearers and those who love fashion statement glasses when indoors. Tough.
Leaving Mexico was mostly easy with security not even asking for shoe removal. Boarding was back to scanning the paper slip or smartphone.
Another surprise awaited us on arrival in Vegas. We have had cameras at the INS booths for some years, but now it seems that they are linked to a facial recognition system. The clue was that after my wife was checked, I stood in front of the camera and the INS lady looked at a screen and said, "Oh yes, and Mr Steve," then she took my passport and looked at it. One more surprise was the lack of any staff at customs, not even the guy to ask "Are you carrying any fruit or meat?" That's a first.
