Air Canada will allow passengers to enroll through its mobile app beginning September 2026 to use a biometric facial-verification gate pilot at Toronto Pearson International Airport. The pilot includes four biometric e-gates: one dedicated to domestic flights and three serving US-bound transborder passengers.
Domestic travelers must opt in via the Air Canada app before reaching the biometric gate. At the gate, a live facial image is captured and matched against the airline’s approved traveler records in its identity gallery. Successful matches replace the requirement to present a physical passport and boarding pass. Passengers traveling to the United States do not
enroll through the airline app but are processed through the US preclearance program, where images are obtained prior to departure and compared live at one of the three transborder biometric gates.
Dormakaba supplies the physical biometric gates used in the pilot, while middleware connecting these gates to identity systems is provided by Airsphere and SITA. Air Canada developed and supplies the enrollment software and traveler identity gallery for the domestic passenger process. The pilot demonstrates two enrollment models: one leveraging airline app enrollment and another utilizing government-held travel records from US preclearance.
Participation in the biometric gates pilot is voluntary,
and traditional document checks will remain available at Toronto Pearson. The airport is monitoring factors such as adoption rates, processing times, passenger throughput, and satisfaction during the pilot phase.
Toronto Pearson currently serves approximately 47 million passengers annually and anticipates this to rise to 65 million in the early 2030s. This biometric gates pilot is part of the airport’s broader modernization program focused on digital identity and automated processing to accommodate growing passenger volumes. Air Canada has previously tested biometric identity solutions through a mobile-based enrollment pilot, and Calgary Airport concurrently employs a separate biometric boarding system using selfie onboarding.
