London's City Airport has become the first in Europe to install a biometric security scanning system for all its staff.

Fingerprint scanners have been installed to control access to all areas of the airport. Initially, only employees use the system, but the scheme will be expanded to include all passengers travelling to the US by November 2004.

The system, designed by Daon, uses an extraction algorithm to identify a unique pattern of connections for identification of each scan.

Actual fingerprints are not stored, to preserve privacy. The system works in conjunction with traditional photo identification.

'Since the tragic events of 11 September 2001 the safety and security of civil aviation has taken on a greater urgency,' said Richard Gooding, managing director of London City Airport.

'Realising the value of biometrics, we worked to develop a biometric solution to integrate with our existing security system and procedures.'

Daon claims there is only a one in 100,000 chance of a non-authorised person being mistakenly accepted, and a 1.5 per cent chance of legitimate users being locked out.

'This is about building the biggest biometric system in the world,' said Oliver Tattan, chief executive of Daon.

'Biometrics will be essential for travel to the US and elsewhere and a solid system is key. It needs to be a failsafe and foolproof system. Biometrics has been used as just a single point system but that's useless - it's like putting a door in the middle of a plain, people just walk round it.'

The US Department of Homeland Security says that by November 2004 it wants all visitors to have at least two forms of biometric identification to enter the country.

Experts are divided over the quality of biometric systems, saying it would be difficult to ensure large numbers of people use such systems and that they are unproven in large scale use.

Tests using iris scanning have produced mixed results. One manufacturer claimed a 0.5 per cent failure rate, but independent tests by the US government's Department of Defense found false positives rose to 6 per cent.