Passed the physical? Now you’re ready for take-off
How airports are gearing up for passengers and flights post-virus Temperature tests, PPE, check-in apps... the changing face of your holiday flight
THIS is normally a time of frantic activity at Scotland’s busiest airport as hordes of holidaymakers jet off in search of some sun and airlines gear up for the start of the school summer holidays.
This year, however, the coronavirus pandemic has put foreign travel on hold and in place of 40,000 passengers a day, Edinburgh Airport is handling barely a few hundred.
Some days, not a single traveller troubles the staff standing idle at security, or passes the closed duty-free shops.
Behind the scenes, senior staff beaver away to solve the knotty problem of international travel in the shadow of Covid-19. But when that day comes, how much of the airport experience will have changed for ever?
‘Travel, and international travel particularly, is likely to be one of the slower recovery rates of most industries,’ said Gordon Dewar, chief executive officer of Edinburgh Airport.
‘We are not expecting any significant demand this year. The winter is going to be very quiet but we’d like to think that, looking into summer 2021, we will see a very rapid recovery for that phase. Bookings for next summer are at 2019 levels.
‘The airlines are desperate to get flying again, so the fundamental problem here is getting a standardised global travel policy – what are you allowed to do and when – and that seems some way off. Can passengers cross a border without going into a 14-day quarantine, which makes travel pointless?’
Here then, the Scottish Daily Mail joins Mr Dewar in a virtual tour of his airport to see what the future of air travel might look like.
ARRIVING AT THE AIRPORT
EvEN before they reach the terminal buildings, people will notice changes.
They may have to arrive even earlier than the two hours normally stipulated for foreign flights, to leave time to pass through additional health security measures.
Transport to and from the airport could require extra precautions. Car parks may have to close off every second space on social distancing grounds, while transit buses and public transport may insist on travellers wearing face masks and standing far apart, which may be a challenge with luggage.
Once inside the airport, people will be urged to wear a mask, use the numerous hand sanitiser points that are now being installed and obey the two-metre rule wherever possible.
Health screening, such as temperature checks, will probably have been rolled out.
China and parts of South-East Asia already use thermal-imaging cameras to detect high temperatures – a key indicator of the virus –
and Mr Dewar said such technology could be easily set up.
‘Passengers would be unaware they were being screened,’ he said. ‘Anyone showing symptoms could then be taken aside for further testing. The real question for us would be where to site the cameras. In China, they have it before the boarding card check, which seems sensible to prevent infected passengers heading deeper into the airport building. If you test positive, you are denied travel.’
In the absence of a vaccine, the airport is also looking at reliable rapid-diagnosis antibody tests.
Mr Dewar said it could pave the way for certified passengers being able to travel as they pose no risk.
CHECK-IN
Queues are all too familiar to air passengers. Their first experience of the ‘new normal’ will come at check-in, where travellers will form a traditional line, but keep two metres from those in front. However, as Mr Dewar said: ‘Twometre spacing will work fine in the first few months of recovery when we only have six flights to check in, but it’s not going to work when we get back up to 2019 levels, with 15million people a year passing through here. so then, you have to look at other measures such as PPe and face masks.
‘There are going to be lots of physical plastic barrier separations of the type you see in supermarkets at the interaction points between staff and customers.’
The airport is also looking at contactless ways to speed up the check-in process, such as using mobile apps to key in travel data at automated kiosks. Work is also under way to try to minimise the handling of checked-in baggage.
SECURITY
ONe of the traditional bottlenecks in the system, those snaking lines of shoeless holidaymakers with one hand clutching their beltless trousers are, if anything, likely to move even more slowly as more of us return to flying.
‘If you think back to 2007 or so, we all thought the liquids rule and all the rest of it were undeliverable and that would spell the end of aviation,’ Mr Dewar said. ‘Now it’s just part of the everyday process.’
But he added: ‘security is an area where it could be difficult to implement social distancing depending on volume of demand.’
Most visible changes involve distancing security staff from passengers as far as practicable.
‘We are introducing barrier protection there, we are doing handwashing and sanitisation before and after, we are changing the trays so they are anti-bacterial and anti-viral,’ Mr Dewar said.
‘The Government has changed the rules on hand searches, so we will now swab rather than physically pat down anyone who flags up going through the metal detectors. This will all get resolved over time, but if we are given clear guidance about what is required, we will respond very quickly and can be ready in weeks or months.
‘But the policy-makers must be confident enough to give at least a europe-wide, if not a worldwide, set of rules for aviation to work consistently from.’
PASSPORT CONTROL
THE side-effect of potential contamination from handling documents is speeding up the implementation of facial recognition technology – or biometrics.
Mr Dewar said: ‘Biometrics was coming anyway. It was probably no more than two to five years away from being the absolute standard across europe and North America, but I think Covid-19 has accelerated its introduction.
‘It is going to be a really helpful tool in this fight because if you can remove all of the physical documentation out of the process and all the physical touchpoints, that’s a massive thing for safety.
‘everything would be linked to a biometric, such as a retina scan, and effectively you would never need to get your passport or your ticket out ever again.
‘Wherever you are, your face is your ticket. It will require you to drop your face mask to look into a camera, but I think that is low-risk compared to the alternatives.’
DUTY-FREE AND SHOPPING
MR Dewar believes that, at first, the low numbers of travellers inside the big airport will make this area the least problematic. ‘The social distancing thing will be tricky but we will have one-way aisles and the same sort of things you see in the supermarket,’ he said. ‘In the food outlets, we’ll do things like takeaway food and beverage, we’ll strip out a third, if not half, of the tables in the restaurants so you maintain social distancing. But it will get harder and harder as you get back to normal levels. ‘What you hope is that the other measures we are starting to adopt in the wider community, getting the exposure rate under control and so on, will mean that as the demand for flying grows, the ability to relax the lockdown measures comes with it. ‘Ideally, we will have a vaccine and the problem goes away.’
BOARDING
eveRy second gate, at least, will remain shut at first, while some seating may be taped off to encourage social distancing.
Mr Dewar said: ‘We have got the physical space to implement the changes necessary. It is the airlines who are saying they cannot socially separate. you cannot fly an aircraft a third full and make any money.’
At present, the only passenger jets flying are running ‘repatriation’ services and essential links to the Highlands and Islands.
Largely empty, they can spread passengers around the cabin. But when demand picks up, Mr Dewar believes airlines will need to find ways to safely sit passengers on their planes and when they do, edinburgh Airport ‘will follow those same principles’ throughout the terminal.
He said: ‘We’ve got to be realistic – a blanket two metres can’t happen and doesn’t work, and therefore we’ll need to be a bit more creative about finding solutions that are risk-appropriate.’
Masks and protective clothing will be paramount for airport and airline staff – and may well be mandatory for passengers, too.
If new biometrics measures are introduced, passengers will find they probably do not have to present travel documents to staff before boarding their plane.
‘If we can make airport terminals safer than anywhere else, that is going to be reassuring and get people on a plane,’ Mr Dewar said. ‘We are still some way from having the technology to allow that, but that’s our direction of travel.
‘We need to balance the overriding health issues with the need to get the economy flying again.’