Guangzhou airport making customs process smoother with tech

Guangzhou Customs has vowed to further promote "smart customs services" to allow law-abiding passengers to enjoy zero interruption clearance in Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport.

Chen Donglu, deputy customs director at the airport, said customs departments are using big data, facial recognition, surveillance videos and related advanced technologies and artificial intelligence equipment to help make it easier for passengers to go through customs and security checks.

"Those who have low risk (of violating laws and regulations) will never be checked by customs officers at the airport, and can take their luggage by themselves to depart or arrive in the airport via self-service channels," Chen said at a press conference in the Guangdong provincial capital on Thursday.

"They will not be stopped or checked by officers after scanning their passports and related travel documents in the self-service machines," Chen said.

The airport's new terminal 2 has 20 self-service outbound channels and another 30 inbound ones.

"Passengers can complete customs procedures in a few seconds thanks to introduction of facial recognition, self-service declaration machines and related artificial intelligence technologies," he said.

T2 also has 12 robots that can speak English, Mandarin, Cantonese dialect and other foreign languages, and answer more than 1,000 potential questions from passengers after arrival in the airport, Chen added.

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, a major aviation hub in the southern Chinese region, now has two terminals and three runways in operation.

The airport is expected to be able to handle more than 80 million passenger trips and 2.5 million metric tons of cargo annually by 2020. It handled 65.8 million passenger trips and 1.78 million metric tons of cargo last year and is expected to see more than 70 million passenger trips and 1.9 million metric tons of cargo in 2018.