Q: Is there any evidence that a facial recognition-enabled boarding gate can process a line of passengers <i>more rapidly</i> than a human can?<p>My (completely anecdotal) experience of the last few dozen flights is that an average gate agent - if handed a boarding pass and identity document open at the photo page - is capable in matching the name on both documents, matching the photo against the face, and scanning the boarding pass in less than 10 seconds, and the good ones can do it in 5 seconds.<p>Are machines actually <i>better</i>, or merely <i>cheaper</i> than humans?