Early, Accurate Check-In: Air France-KLM Gets More Passengers Travel-Ready with Scandit

As one of Europe's top airline groups, Air France-KLM carries over 76.7 million customers to more than 300 destinations annually. Operating in a highly competitive, tightly regulated environment, the group works to reduce friction around passenger clearance and day-of-travel operations. It’s vital to ensure everything runs on time and customers have the smoothest possible airport experience.

The gap between a smooth departure and a disrupted one often comes down to one question: did this passenger arrive at the gate with the right documents, accurately scanned?

As part of a drive to streamline ID scanning at check-in for customers, Air France-KLM turned to Scandit. By deploying Scandit in their websites and mobile apps, the group moved document checks from the airport gate to the customer's home - transforming a compliance pain point into a competitive advantage.

"Customers have always been able to enter their passport details from home - the problem was getting them to do it easily, accurately, and early. With Scandit, we moved that step to the customer's living room in a way that actually works."

Laurens Jansma, Senior Product Owner, Passenger Clearance, Air France-KLM

Challenge

Air France-KLM's ambition was clear: get more customers completing online check-in with accurate Advance Passenger Information (API) data, so they arrive at the airport ready to travel and have a friction-free journey. But the share of passengers successfully using the existing scanning solution was lower than expected, resulting in more customers resorting to manual passport entry or arriving at the gate with incomplete documentation.

The key metric is the 'ineligible to board rate' - passengers requiring manual checks at the gate. Many simply needed their passport scanned hours earlier. The consequences were tangible:

"If there's a 777 fully loaded with passengers, and many must queue for passport swipes at the gate, it's not smooth. You incur potential operational friction, delays, and frustration - this doesn’t fit the seamless airport experience we want to deliver for our customers."

Laurens Jansma, Air France-KLM

In real-world conditions - glare, awkward angles, partial obstructions, variable camera quality - a robust scanning solution was required. Additionally a solution that kept pace with mobile OS updates was key. Otherwise when customers updated their OS, scanning might not work at all.

Another requirement was for a scanning solution that handled all the user-facing guidance - lighting tips, error messages, recovery flows - with no need to maintain internally across every update cycle.

Compliance stakes raise the pressure

Scanning performance wasn't just a UX problem. Air France-KLM operates across hundreds of international routes, each subject to API requirements. Governments fine airlines for transporting passengers with incorrect or incomplete documentation - even when errors result from scan misreads rather than passenger negligence:

“Even if you have a document that you think you have scanned properly, but there's a misread, you still get a fine. It's not just the fines - it's also the relations with the authorities." Laurens Jansma, Air France-KLM

A data quality problem impacting loyalty profiles

For members of Flying Blue, the group’s loyalty program, there’s an extra benefit to getting passport scanning right: they can store a scanned passport in their profile and reuse it for future trips, instead of re‑entering details every time.

But when scanning fails, customers fall back on manual entry - and manual entry data quality can't be trusted for compliance purposes. Typos, transposed numbers, and outdated document details also quietly accumulate in Flying Blue customer profiles, creating a database that looks complete but is unreliable. Air France-KLM needed scanning that worked well enough to replace manual entry entirely - so that only verified, scanned data sat in customer profiles.

Solution

After settling on a new document scanning approach to tackle these challenges, Air France-KLM selected Scandit.

The digital team deployed a Scandit POC in approximately one week. Testing against edge cases - low-resolution cameras, lower-end smartphones, poor lighting - Scandit passed across the board.

Where other solutions require passengers to hold their document perfectly still for several seconds and still frequently fail, Scandit read the MRZ near-instantly. The technology selected itself.

As well as its usability, a key technical differentiator was Scandit's on-device processing. Alternative solutions relying on server-side processing introduced latency and failed in low-connectivity environments - a real problem when customers scan from homes, hotel rooms, and airport lounges.

One implementation, two brands, multiple touchpoints

With the decision made, Air France-KLM deployed Scandit's ID Bolt - a ready-to-deploy web scanning component that integrates directly into browser-based flows - across the Air France and KLM websites.

The Scandit ID Scanning SDK was also integrated into both airlines’ mobile apps.

A rapidly scaling deployment

The initial deployment in February 2025 focused on check-in - the highest-traffic scanning touchpoint. As confidence grew, the team extended scanning earlier into the trip management flow (MyTrip), so customers could scan and store passport details directly after booking.

The reliability and smooth experience unlocked something more significant: for KLM, document scanning became mandatory in the reservation window - before check-in opens. This was a step the team had wanted to take, but one requiring a solution they could fully trust.

"Not only is scanning now surfaced as the default route for Air France, we now enforce for KLM that you need to scan your documents in the window before check-in opens. We could only do that with a product we trust."

Laurens Jansma, Air France-KLM

Scanning integrates with Flying Blue profiles, so documents scanned once can be saved across future bookings, eliminating repetition.

As Laurens noted: "Many customers will be fully travel-ready without doing anything, just by being logged in while booking. Where customers need to apply for interactive programs, like ESTA or eTA, by capturing their passport data we can proactively inform them of the requirements far before check-in opens."

For customers checking-in via the web especially, a seamless user experience was vital. The incumbent's QR device handover feature saw only one in three completions. ID Bolt's QR device handover lets users switch seamlessly to their phone - within a single session, without losing progress.

This smooth and reliable scanning has also extended beyond passports, with the ability to scan permanent resident cards now live in the deployment.

Performance that earns passenger trust

The step-change in scanning performance was immediate.

Scandit's high performance ID capture and on-device processing meant the MRZ was read near-instantly - across low-end smartphones, laptop webcams, and variable lighting conditions. Where previously users had to hold documents perfectly still for several seconds, Scandit's built-in UX guidance (positioning and lighting prompts) handled the hard work. Customers didn't need to learn anything new; the experience simply worked.

The difference was obvious. Laurens Jansma remarked: “I did a Scandit demo for KLM's senior management. The speed of the solution genuinely surprised them - it performed faster than they expected."

A rapid deployment and a genuine partnership

The deployment from initial integration to go-live was rapid. Scandit provided dedicated onboarding resources and close working-level collaboration throughout - the kind of support that the Air France-KLM web team described as genuinely different from a vendor relationship. One Information Specialist from the Air France-KLM web team commented: "Integrating Scandit was really smooth and fast - it’s a plug-and-play ID scanning solution. The fastest implementation I've seen across all the vendors we tested."

The internal reaction on first use was equally telling. When the implementation lead first used the live solution when checking-in for a flight, they sent a simple message back to the team: "I love how fast it is."

Results

Air France-KLM processed 8.4+ million scans in 2025 through Scandit. In the first half of 2025, it scanned 250k travel documents per month, but after introducing mandatory scan for KLM in MyTrip and adding an extra reminder to scan in check-in, this increased to 750k document scans per month.

Key metrics at a glance:

• 29% reduction in passengers ineligible to board (KLM Amsterdam hub, AF-KLM estimate)
• 91% of users who open ID Bolt scan their ID successfully - a multifold increase in the completion rate
• 85% conversion for passengers who reach the QR device handover screen (vs. 1 in 3 previously)

Fewer passengers arriving ineligible

The most operationally significant result is the increase in customers arriving at the airport with valid, already scanned documents - a key contributing factor in increasing the number of passengers ready-to-travel upon arrival at the airport.

"At KLM's Amsterdam hub, we have seen around a 29% reduction in passengers ineligible to board - directly reducing gate queues, agent workload, and the risk of departure delays. Scandit ID Bolt has played a key role in this."

Laurens Jansma, Air France-KLM

Customers arriving genuinely ready to fly

Around one-third of customers are now fully travel-ready before check-in even opens - a figure that reflects the post-booking scanning touchpoint capturing document data earlier in the journey than was previously possible. 

It also reflects the profile-save functionality working as intended: frequent travellers scanning once and benefiting from that data on every subsequent trip  - the kind of effortless experience that turns a compliance requirement into a genuine loyalty benefit. Internally, demand also continues to grow - operations teams are consistently asking: "Can you scan more passengers?"

Adoption that reflects a better experience

91% of users who open ID Bolt during online check-in completed their document scan, reflecting its ease-of-use.

The QR device handover - the bridge between desktop and mobile scanning - converts at over 85%, a strong signal that passengers find the experience intuitive enough to follow through.

Customers noticed the performance too: “One change I saw after deploying Scandit, was that all of a sudden we started seeing positive feedback about the ID scanning coming in from customers.” Laurens Jansma comments.

Scandit's performance and accuracy gave Air France-KLM the confidence to route significantly more customers through document scanning, earlier in their journey, to ultimately help reduce the ineligible to board rate.

The improvement in data quality is also beginning to show in Flying Blue profiles, where scanned passport entries are increasingly replacing the manually entered data that previously couldn't be relied upon.

A stable foundation for the future

The deployment has run consistently since launch, providing the infrastructure Air France-KLM needs to expand scanning across the customer journey. The impact reaches across the organisation - from digital and mobile teams to airport operations.

"Our Scandit deployment has been stable since go-live. It's delivering exactly what we need - fast and accurate MRZ scanning that just works."

Information Specialist - Web Team, Air France-KLM

Air France-KLM's roadmap focuses on extending what's already working around removing friction:

"In early 2026, we deleted all manually entered passports from Flying Blue profiles and now only allow documents added via Scandit scan - so we know our database is trustworthy." Laurens Jansma, Senior Product Owner, Passenger Clearance, Air France-KLM

In Conclusion

"My advice to peers at other airlines who are dealing with the same document scanning and data accuracy challenges: run a proof of concept with Scandit in your own environment. That's what convinced us."

Laurens Jansma, Senior Product Owner, Passenger Clearance, Air France-KLM