“Going Places”
Updated branding comes with new phone app expected soon
Albany International Airport will soon launch a phone app to go along with its new logo and website, all part of its updated branding.
A new logo and website, and soon a new phone app, are part of a project launched six months ago by the Albany International Airport to update its branding. The new theme: “Going Places.”
And with fully vaccinated individuals beginning to travel again, “it’s just great timing” to introduce the airport’s new brand, said airport CEO Phil Calderone.
The new logo can be seen displayed overhead as passengers clear the security checkpoints and enter the various concourses.
The rebranding work was performed by Vibrant Brands, a Latham-based company that’s just a short distance from the airport. The firm was selected from a list of companies responding to the airport’s request for proposals. The work is expected to cost the airport authority no more than $60,000, airport spokesman Doug Myers said.
Calderone has focused Albany on being a “smart” airport, working with General Electric’s Global Research Center and GE Aviation on such projects as an app that tells users when a given area of the airport was last cleaned, for example. That project was intended to keep travelers and staff safe from the coronavirus.
The airport also serves as an incubator for digital innovations being developed by GE.
With the rebranding, he’s also seeking to make the airport “progressive,” and has introduced a reading room on the first level in a cooperative effort with the New York State Writers Institute, as well as enlisting Albany’s former city gardener to install new plantings around the terminal.
The old logo was beginning to show its age. “We haven’t modernized in a decade,” Calderone said Wednesday.
With traffic rebounding, airlines are beginning to add more flights. Currently, it has anywhere from 22 to 28 scheduled departures on any given day.
The airport authority is in the early stages of a new master plan that includes adding cargo space and hangar space, and an expanded main entrance to the
main terminal building.
The website, which debuts early Friday morning, will be more intuitive than the current website, Calderone said, and will incorporate much of the technology that’s been installed in the airport’s two parking garages to help travelers find available spaces.
“It’s more interactive and more user-friendly,” he added. The phone apps should be available next month.