A clear message from the 2016 SITA Passenger IT Trends Survey is that passengers prefer technology-delivered over people-delivered service. The survey indicates that 91% of passengers using self-service technology at some stage of their air travel journey will repeat the experience. “Once people are converted from person-to-person interaction to using self-service technology for travel steps, few want to go back,” the survey concludes. The survey found that “even if a passenger is not satisfied with self-service technology, they tend to try an alternative one rather than revert to human contact.” The survey found that 92% of passengers are using technology to make their flight bookings (75% via a website, 16% using mobile apps and 1% using airport kiosks), with 43% using off-airport web or mobile check-in. <br/>
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Longer airport screening lines expected this summer are unacceptable and have come after months of warnings by airlines and airports, the chairman of the House of Representatives’ Homeland Security Committee said. Representative Michael McCaul said at a hearing Wednesday that the US TSA hadn’t reacted swiftly enough to the growing wait times and hadn’t used its resources appropriately. “This crisis didn’t just come out of nowhere,” McCaul said. “Airports and airlines have been sounding the alarm for months.” While some in Congress have said TSA hasn’t used its resources appropriately, TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger said lines grew in response to lawmakers’ criticism last year about lax security and cuts in the agency’s budgets that has reduced the number of screeners by about 5,000 in the past 5 years. <br/>
French air traffic controllers will strike again Thursday, the 48th strike day in France since 2009. French ATCs will work on reduced capacity for at least 24 hours from Thursday morning. According to A4E, further strikes have been announced from June 3-5 and again June 14. “For the seventh time in the past 2 months, ATCs in France are infringing on people’s rights. The overall impact of these strikes will be immense as they are taking place at a very busy time of the year…The EC and govts must act immediately to protect the rights of millions of European travellers affected,” A4E MD Thomas Reynaert said. The latest ATC strikes in Greece, Italy, Belgium and France in March, April and May have caused more than 2,500 cancellations among A4E members. <br/>