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The last big breakthrough in aviation when it comes to boarding your flight came in the early 2000s, with the arrival of eTicketing. But a new proposed overhaul of how you get on planes could shake things up in a much larger way. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations agency that oversees international airline policy, has revealed plans for a digital travel credential (DTC), which will do away with boarding passes and current check-in procedures and instead rely on technology like facial recognition. (Some 193 countries, including the U.S., are members of the ICAO.) A pilot program testing the DTC has been underway in Finland for almost a year, with approval ratings of higher than 90%. Participating passengers look at a camera and place their passport on a reader device. The ICAO overhaul, though, would see passport data securely stored on passenger smartphones. Amsterdams Schiphol Airport, in 2019, also introduced facial recognition technology for boarding on select flights. France and Mexico also use the technology in some instances. Its still unclear whether or when we might ditch boarding passes and physical passports in the U.S. Development of a digital travel credential is something that will be optional for each nation. The U.S. Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) did not respond to a Fast Company request for comment about how, when, or if this would be implemented in U.S. airports, though many airports already use facial recognition technology. Boarding: Now versus then The changes proposed by the ICAO would upend the airport experience, however. Today, most passengers must check in with their carrier either online or at the airport, then scan a boarding pass before they enter the plane. It can be a bit slow, especially if you’re running late. Under the new system, passengers would download what’s called a “journey pass” to their phones when they book their flights. This will contain all your booking details and let you move throughout the airport without having to fish out your passport or boarding pass from your pocket. Facial recognition will identify you when you enter the airport and alert the carrier you have arrived. Delta, at its CES keynote in January, hinted at some of these features, showing an imagined travel day for one passenger using the upcoming AI-driven Delta Concierge service, including the use of facial recognition to bypass the check-in process. Hurdles and advances A global rollout of the system is expected to take place over the next two to three years, with full adoption expected by 2028, though it might be later for smaller airports. That timetable might be overly ambitious, however. It would require airports and airlines to radically change their systems. Many airlines silo the various parts of their operations (reservations, for example, are not tied directly with passenger processing at the airport). Transitioning to a DTC system will require airports to make extensive infrastructures upgrades and would require significant investments. Passengers could also have issues with not being able to opt out of facial recognition technology. And facial recognition technology does not have the best track record when it comes to recognizing people of color. The Times, a British daily newspaper, reports the equipment that will be used at airports will only verify information, making sure the passenger’s face matches the passport. Data will not be stored, to lower the chances of a data breach. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) estimates the number of air passengers will double to 8 billion by 2040. The ICAO is attempting to reduce the friction of travel with the new system and is betting DTC can not only increase the accuracy of flight systems, but make those coming crowds easier to navigate.
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Pop star Katy Perry, journalist Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez, a former journalist who is Jeff Bezoss fiancé, were among six women who traveled aboard Blue Origin’s all-female, celebrity-studded, suborbital space mission on Monday morning. This marks the New Shepard’s 11th crewed trip from Blue Origin, the private space company founded by Amazon CEO and billionaire Jeff Bezos. Some critics have called it a publicity stunt for space tourism, or even just an ad for the Amazon founder’s company. King herself expressed some concern about that, telling CBS that she has questioned some of Bezos’s “troubling” decisions. Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, has been criticized for his allegiance to President Donald Trump and for his recent decision to overhaul the Washington Post‘s Opinion page, which critics say undermines the newspaper’s editorial independence. Others question whether the 11-minute ride to the “edge of space,” about 62 miles above sea level past the Kármán line, makes the passengers true astronauts, as the flights are suborbital, meaning they don’t achieve full orbital velocity and the distance is limited. The liftoff took place at 9:30 a.m. ET from Blue Origins launch site in Van Horn, Texas. Also aboard: Aisha Bowe, a former NASA rocket scientist; Amanda Nguyen, a bioastronautics research scientist and the first Vietnamese woman to travel to space; and Kerianne Flynn, a film producer. This marks the New Shepard’s 11th crewed trip to space, and the first all-women crew to enter space since Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkovas solo mission in 1963. Women make up only about 15% of all those who have traveled to space. However, despite that effort toward equality, critics have argued space tourism has become a playground for billionaires like Bezosand rivals Richard Branson, who owns Virgin Galactic, and Elon Musk, who owns SpaceXthat only the ultra-wealthy can afford. And as the New York Times reported, “If the flight proves anything, it is that women are now free to enjoy capitalisms most decadent spoils alongside the worlds wealthiest men.” It’s also worth noting that critics say space tourism clearly isn’t viable for most of us. While Blue Origin did not publicly release the price of tickets for Monday’s flights, Virgin Galactic has advertised ticket sales for between $250,000 and $450,000, according to CNN. (A Blue Origin spokesman told the news network some passengers flew free of charge.) Fast Company has reached out to Blue Origin for comment on the criticism around space tourism. This isn’t the first time Blue Origin has flown a celebrity to the edge of space: Since 2021, 52 people have boarded its space flights, including Star Trek actor William Shatner. Meanwhile, Blue Origin has also sued SpaceX over billions of dollars in government funding, as some have argued that SpaceX founder Musk is trying to create a monopoly in the private space industry.
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David Die Dejean is passionate about studying tuna. Last year, he landed a dream job at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Miami to pursue his research. By January, he was settled in, had received a good review and loved working with his colleagues, he said. Then in mid-February he received an email to vacate the premises within 90 minutes. He and hundreds of others had been dismissed in job cuts targeting probationary workers as U.S. President Donald Trump’s new administration began slashing funding for universities and research bodies. Now Die Dejean is applying for positions in Europe. “I want to work wherever they allow me to do the research,” said the scientist, who studies fish stocks to ensure tuna is being fished sustainably. “I’m eagerly waiting for some of the things that are coming from the European Unionincreasing the opportunities for scientists like me to come back,” said Die Dejean, who was born in Spain but has spent most of his career in the U.S. and Australia. Trump’s administration says billions of dollars in cuts are needed to curb the federal deficit and bring the U.S. debt under control. His cutbacks on research come amid a broader clash that has seen Trump criticise universities as discriminatory for their diversity policies and denounce what he sees as a failure by some institutions to protect Jewish students from antisemitism. The threat to academics’ livelihoods at universities including Yale, Columbia and Johns Hopkins has given Europe’s political leaders hope they could reap an intellectual windfall. A letter, reviewed by Reuters, signed in March by 13 European countries including France, Germany and Spain, urged the EU Commission to move fast to attract academic talent. The European Research Council, an EU body that finances scientific work, told Reuters it would double the relocation budget for funding researchers moving to the EU to 2 million euros ($2.16 million) per applicant. That goes towards covering the cost of moving to a European institution, which may involve setting up a laboratory. In Germany, as part of coalition talks for a new government, conservatives and Social Democrats have drawn up plans to lure up to 1,000 researchers, according to negotiation documents from March seen by Reuters that allude to the upheaval in U.S. higher learning. Reuters spoke to 13 European universities and research institutes that reported seeing an increase in U.S-based employees considering crossing the Atlantic, as well as half a dozen U.S.-based academics pondering a move to Europe. “Regulatory uncertainty, funding cuts, immigration restrictions, and diminished international collaboration create a perfect storm for brain drain,” said Gray McDowell at U.S. digital consultancy firm Capgemini Invent. A White House official said the administration is analysing research grants and prioritizing funding for areas likely to deliver returns for taxpayers “or some sort of meaningful scientific advancement”. The NOAA cuts were designed to avoid compromising its ability to do its duties, the official added. European momentum Pulling in U.S. talent to Europe requires more than good will though. It requires money. For decades, Europe has lagged far behind the U.S. on investment in its seats of higher learning. Total expenditure on research and development in the EU among businesses, governments, universities and private non-profit organizations in 2023 was 381 billion euros ($411 billion), according to the latest figures by Eurostat – the statistical office of the European Union. That same year, total research and experimental development in the U.S. was estimated at $940 billion, according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, a federal agency that provides data on the performance of science and engineering in the U.S. And while the U.S’s richest university, Harvard, has an endowment worth $53.2 billion, that of Britain’s wealthiest, Oxford, is only 8.3 billion pounds ($10.74 billion). One academic and an expert in academia said, even with a concerted and substantial effort, Europe would likely need a long time to overturn that spending advantage. “I don’t foresee a rapid build-up of additional scientific capability that could match what the U.S. now hasfor several decades”, Michael Oppenheimer, a Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton, told Reuters. The White House official said even with the cuts, the U.S. would still account for the most global research funding, adding: “Europe is not going to and cannot fill the void.” Dozens of scientists have taken to social media encouraging peers to stay in the U.S., while others acknowledge a number of drawbacks may deter them from moving. Michael Olesen, director of an infection prevention program for a healthcare system in Washington, D.C., said language barriers were one potential drawback, as were unfamiliar laws and employment practices. Salary is another. “My impression is that I would get paid a lot less as an anaesthesiologist in Europe,” said Holden K. Groves, an Assistant Professor of Anaesthesiology at Columbia University, which received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “It’s a huge ordeal to change.” “Huge opportunity” Still, Europe’s political leaders feel the stance of the Trump administration has put the wind in their sails. “The American government is currently using brute force against the universities in the USA, so that researchers from America are now contacting Europe,” Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, Friedrich Merz, said last month. “This is a huge opportunity for us.” John Tuthill, a American neuroscience professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, is assessing his options. He cannot apply for new funding to plan beyond 2027 because grant applications have now been frozen. The lab of 17 people he runs gets about three-quarters of its funding from the NIH, where the Trump administration has earmarked major cuts. “Europe is the obvious one, because it is the other hub of biomedical research in the world,” said Tuthill, who is originally from Maine, adding he is weighing up a move with his wife and daughter. Aix Marseille University in France told Reuters it had received interest from 120 researchers at institutions in the U.S., including NASA and Stanford, for a 15-million euro ‘safe space for science’ programme launched on March 7. The initiative aims to attract U.S. staff from fields including health, LGBT+ medicine, epidemiology and climate change. “Our colleagues were frightenedIt was our duty to rise to the occasion,” university director Eric Berton said, noting 10 European universities have contacted him about launching similar programs. In the Netherlands, the government wants to establish a fund to attract top foreign scientists and bolster the EU’s ‘strategic autonomy’ aims, Education Minister Eppo Bruins said in a letter to parliament on 20 March. That marks a policy shift as the government had previously announced plans to cut half a billion euros in research and higher education. Eindhoven Tech University President Robert-Jan Smits told Reuters that bringing in U.S. scientists could boost Europe’s technological sovereigty in areas like semiconductors. Belgium’s sister universities Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Université Libre de Bruxelles have launched a scheme encouraging U.S.-based researchers to apply for 36 postdoctoral positions. And the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which promotes the exchange of top scientists to Germany, plans to increase its programs by about 20 percent. The Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, which specialises in climate change research, is creating at least two more research fellowship posts for early-career climate researchers from the U.S. and has already seen an clear uptick in applications, said its Director of Research, Joeri Rogelj. Sarah Weisberg, a fisheries biologist at the National Marine Fisheries Service, based in Woods Hole Massachusetts, said she was fired in February’s probationary cuts and has since been offered a job in Europe. “I had not ever considered taking [my career] to Europe,” she told Reuters. “Now, I kind of have no choice but to think that way.” ($1 = 0.7754 pounds) ($1 = 0.9264 euros) (This story has been refiled to correct the missing word “of” in paragraph 3.) Olivia Le Poidevin, Kate Abnett, and Gloria Dickie, Reuters
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