WAY FORWARD

Four advances in airport technology to look out for

Four key advances in airport technology

A irport solution providers – the people who make just about every part of your journey possible, from shops and security to airbridges and bag handling – gathered in London in March for the annual Passenger Terminal Expo. The exhibits provided an insight into what you can expect to find in the airports of tomorrow, and developments that should make travel a more seamless and enjoyable process. This is what’s in store…

1 BETTER BAG TRACKING

Fewer bags are getting lost by airlines and airports – only 5.57 per thousand in 2017, according to aviation tech specialist SITA’s most recent report. Happily, that figure looks set to improve even further. Last year, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) passed Resolution 753, which requires members to track bags at four points – handover from the passenger, loading on to the aircraft, delivery to transfer area and return to the passenger – and share tracking information with interline journey partners as needed.

While this hasn’t created a sudden transformation in practices, it is leading airports, airlines and ground handlers to invest in new technology that allows them to better track the 4.65 billion bags they carry each year.

RFID (radio-frequency identification) is one of the best ways to track bags but is still not used by a majority of airlines. Several exhibitors showing machines that can print RFID labels, such as Avery Dennison, Custom and Seikodo, explained that while the printing is more expensive, the machines used to scan them come considerably cheaper than the ones that scan barcodes (around US$2,000, compared with US$10,000), and economies of scale should mean the printing itself becomes cheaper as more airlines opt for the technology.

The labels contain passive chips with no internal power source that become activated when an antennae “shines” on them, after which they communicate information back. This means they can be read more easily, unlike a barcode that may be concealed or damaged.

In its 2018 survey into passenger attitudes, SITA found that 95 per cent of respondents would like an app that notified them about where their bag was along the journey ( like Delta’s does, using RFID tags). The IATA resolution could see this become more commonplace.

SITA is also adapting its World Tracer database, which shares information about lost bags between 510 airlines and 2,800 airports, into a public information source. Passengers can use a website or app to submit details of their lost luggage and enter a return address, instead of having to wait at an airport counter. They can track the bag’s progress via the app.

2 SHORTER QUEUES

The data that airports compile on how people move through them is becoming much more detailed. Numerous companies offer hardware and software to help airports reduce queues, optimise space and better allocate and position staff. Abu Dhabi International Airport, for example, partnered with Pads4 to use smart sensors to siphon people into efficient queue patterns, while London City worked with Arcport to create simulations of passenger

movements to lower the average journey time from airport arrival to the departure lounge to 20 minutes.

Futuristic-looking crowd monitoring systems at the Expo showed everything from an individual’s gender and height to whether they were a passenger or airport staff, even using facial recognition to ascertain how they might be feeling. All are creating anonymous databases that airports can use to understand where customers are going and when.

It’s not just your face that airports are interested in – Italian seat company Tecno displayed seats that track how long someone sits in them. They also monitor when passengers are using tables and plug sockets, all aimed at allowing better decisionmaking on where to place them.

3 IMPROVED TIME MANAGEMENT

All of this should not only reduce queues but also better inform flyers about how much time to leave. US company Iinside uses lidar scanners to detect human shapes at a dozen US airports. It passes that data on for the calculation of average queue times that can be sent to a phone or app, predictive queue times based on current events and past patterns, and queues at places such as traffic stands. Such systems are in place at New York JFK, Iceland’s Keflavik, Amsterdam Schiphol, Manchester and Birmingham.

It could mean an airline or ridehailing app suggesting what time to leave home to catch your flight, incorporating current traffic, vehicle queues around the airport and predicted security wait times a few hours ahead.

“When you don’t know how long a line is, the experience tends to feel between 20 and 30 per cent longer than it is,” said Iinside chief executive Sam Kamel. The technology is all about “taking the unpredictability out of the airport experience”, he added.

4 MORE BIOMETRICS

We’ve recently written about the use of biometrics (“Face of the future”, March 2019 issue), and it is clear that there is a boom in companies providing such services. These include “end-to-end” or partial biometric systems that use facial recognition at check-in, bagdrop, security and boarding, as well as some that use iris, fingerprint and even voice recognition.

Panasonic had an impressive range of facial recognition technologies at the Expo. They included an information screen that will highlight your flight number and gate as you look at it, and a robot on trial at Tokyo Narita that will provide information such as how to get to your gate based on the flight information it matched up with your face ( you provide the biometric data and your passport information at a kiosk during check-in).

All of this tech should not only reduce queues but also better inform flyers about how much time to leave