Delta confirmed with TPG that Atlanta's Terminal E, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City will all be live at various points in July. It won't be a hard switch; rather, Delta will install facial recognition equipment at one gate, and once tested and proven, more gates will be brought online until each gate is equipped.
I tested the service from end to end in Atlanta's Terminal F, and you can read more on my experience here.
Delta worked with US Customs and Border Protection, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the Transportation Security Administration to bring optional biometric boarding to international flights in Atlanta's Terminal F in December of 2018. Now that the airline has had a few months to test and learn, the system is spreading to new locales.
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The launch of biometric boarding is a first-of-its-kind experience for MSP and SLC. If you're traveling out of either airport (as well as Terminals E and F in Atlanta), you'll need to be ticketed on a nonstop international flight to take advantage. Delta flights are supported, as are those on SkyTeam partners Aeromexico, Air France-KLM and Virgin Atlantic.
Since launching in Atlanta's Terminal F, Delta has commissioned third-party customer insight research to gather feedback from those experiencing the process for the first time. According to Delta, that research found that 72% prefer facial recognition to standard boarding. Moreover, just 2% of customers opted out of the process, though Delta makes clear that anyone uncomfortable with the notion of having their face scanned to board can use a traditional ticket instead.
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