WASHINGTON — U.S. airlines will begin asking travelers this weekend to provide their birth date and gender for the first time under a new federal aviation security requirement, federal officials said Wednesday.
The change comes as the Department of Homeland Security takes over responsibility for checking airline passenger names against government watch lists.
The additional information is expected to cut down on cases in which people with names similar to those on terrorist watch lists are erroneously barred or delayed from flights.
While the program is phased in, nothing will happen to passengers who do not provide the information, officials said. But once the program is fully implemented, they could be denied boarding passes.
“It would simply mean if you didn’t have the information, you would be subjected to secondary screening,” said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transportation Association of America.
