More airports are joining an industry-led consortium focused on implementing and developing standards for biometric access control.

An industry-led effort to create a framework that will allow different ways for the nation's airports to adopt standards for biometric enabled access control for their employees is in the early phases of a pilot project that includes six airports with three more on the way.

Six airports are currently participating in the Biometric Airport Security Identification Consortium (BASIC) pilot begun last spring and all are in the first or second phase of the four phase effort, Lori Beckman, an aviation security consultant and the coordinator of the BASIC pilot projects, tells TR2.

Those participants represent a mix of category X and I airports. A category III airport is currently going through the approval process to joint the pilot and two other airports, one a category II and the other a category IV, have stepped up to participate, she says.

Having a range of airports participate, particularly from large to small, will help uncover the various challenges that exist in creating a common framework for biometric enabled access control and also help set forth best practices that may apply to some airports and not to others, Beckman says.

"These are the early adopters who are going to share their expertise and learning with the broader community and they're doing it consistently," Carter Morris, the head of Transportation Security Policy at the American Association of Airport Executives, the trade group that represents airports, tells TR2.

The airport categories refer to Transportation Security Administration classification system in which basically the category X airports have the largest number of passenger boardings and the category IV airports the least.

BASIC was established last spring by operators of some airports and AAAE to stave off a potentially one-sided effort by TSA to force a rulemaking on