India's Rajiv Gandhi airport starts biometric e-boarding

India's one of the world's fastest-growing destinations for business travelers, and that's just one of the reasons the government's trying to make new infrastructure state-of-the-art. The latest big tech development is in the southern capital of Hyderabad, where Rajiv Gandhi Airport is the country's first to provide paperless e-boarding using biometrics.

According to the Indian business news website Trak.in, biometrics was first introduced as a pilot a few months ago. It makes border control totally humanless, sending passengers an SMS with a QR code 24 hours before the flight and allowing them to check-in by scanning the code, providing a fingerprint scan and a 12-digit government-issued biometric card number.

If fliers can avoid the thoughts of creepy government tracking from entering their brain, the new process is great — air travelers will no longer need to queue outside the terminal (biometrics passengers will enter through a separate gate). The process is only available to residents of India who've applied for a biometric card though; everyone else will still board in the typical non futuristic fasion.

According to Trak.in, e-boarding facilities will be introduced for international flights at Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore airports next. Meanwhile, U.S. Customs is also using biometrics in its Visa Waiver program, and Alaska Airlines just started its own pilot program using e-boarding with biometrics at Mineta San Jose Airport. Welcome to the future. Get ready to have your fingerprint taken.