Milan Bergamo: watching the terminal and guarding the perimeter
The airport's recent departures expansion brought AI passenger-flow sensing, while older camera infrastructure is used for perimeter monitoring. A newer aircraft-stand vision project remains a trial.
Aerial view of Milan Bergamo Airport. Photograph: Arne Müseler / CC BY-SA 3.0 de (cropped to fit). Shows the airport, not an AI implementation.
The picture at Milan Bergamo
A security camera is not always doing the same job
Bergamo's new departures space has more processing capacity, but the airport also needs to understand how passengers move through it. SACBO says the development includes AI presence detection to monitor flows in real time.
Outside the terminal, the airport has described AI and machine-learning monitoring along its perimeter. The AVIO project tests another use of vision technology at aircraft stands. Those are different operational functions and should not be grouped as though one camera system does them all.
There are published statements about where the systems sit. Results on accuracy, alert handling or passenger waiting time are much less clear.
Selected implementations
Where the image is meant to change a decision
01 / Deployed
Passenger movement through a new departures hall
The operational problem
Extra security lanes do not help as much if queues and crowding go undetected until the area is already congested.
What the sources report
Airport operator SACBO says its departures facilities, opened in November 2025, include AI presence-detection for real-time passenger flow. The terminal work also expanded processing infrastructure.
Why it matters
Flow observations could guide staffing and gate management, provided they reach operational teams in usable time.
What remains unproven
The airport has not published detection accuracy or a before-and-after queue result attributable to this system.
The perimeter and the stand are separate questions
The operational problem
Detecting a perimeter intrusion is a security decision; identifying an aircraft-handling event is an operations decision.
What the sources report
SACBO's 2022 sustainability material describes AI-assisted perimeter monitoring. Reporting in March 2026 says the AVIO computer-vision project was being tested on three aircraft stands.
Why it matters
The established perimeter activity and newer stand trial illustrate how image processing is being applied to two unrelated tasks.
What remains unproven
Perimeter detection performance is not public. AVIO should remain a trial until operational deployment is confirmed.
FACE 2 FLY offers opt-in facial boarding and the Entry/Exit System has biometric registration kiosks. Both are relevant airport technology; neither should automatically be described as an AI operating outcome.
Entry/Exit System self-service kiosks at Milan Bergamo · Deployed · limited scope
Milan Bergamo has self-service kiosks for the EU Entry/Exit System, which records non-EU travellers' travel documents, fingerprints and facial images at the border, according to SACBO's Sustainability Report 2022. BergamoNews reported on 23 May 2022 that SACBO had awarded the kiosk supply, with a base price of about EUR 2 million, to RECO 3.26, a company from Puglia that specialises in biometric recognition.
The tender covered 45 kiosks, 30 at non-Schengen arrivals and 15 at departures, with options to go to 40 and 20, BergamoNews reported. Reco 3.26 described the Bergamo supply in a press release carried by Airport Suppliers on 12 December 2024. SACBO has not published transaction volumes or processing times for the kiosks.
FACE 2 FLY opt-in facial self-boarding at Milan Bergamo · Deployed · limited scope
Milan Bergamo's FACE 2 FLY service offers opt-in facial self-boarding for non-Schengen departures, according to SACBO's Sustainability Report 2022. Passengers enrol by linking their e-passport to their face, and the report describes biometric readers at five gates, with SACBO as data controller and encrypted storage under ISO 27001 certification.
The service remains live, according to SACBO's current privacy notice. Air Tech Italy reported on 20 January 2023 that Reco 3.26 supplies the system, and WeTravel described its availability for non-Schengen travellers on 27 October 2023. SACBO has not published enrolment numbers, and use is limited to passengers who sign up at the designated gates.
The evidence supports operational sensing in the terminal and along the perimeter, with another use under investigation on the apron.
The next editorial development would be measured responses to alerts, not another count of cameras or security lanes.
Live data from the Aerostack register. Status reflects published evidence only. See Our approach for how records are graded.
Aerostack register · 4 tracked deployments
Aerostack tracks AI deployments across airports and airlines, with the published evidence behind each record. Photography is real aviation imagery. Record thumbnails may show the named airport or airline; other photographs do not.
