Delta Airlines believes frequent flyers are unlikely to be terrorists, so it has come up with a scheme for speeding up pre-flight passenger checks and searches (US 2003/225612).
The trouble with existing security, says Delta, is that rival airlines do not share passenger data for fear that competitors will put it to commercial use. Its solution is to formulate a risk assessment score for each passenger, and share those scores among all the airlines. Frequent fliers score high and their rating is coded onto their ticket and boarding pass. Infrequent fliers with lower scores face tighter security checks.
