The five most exciting innovations coming to an airport near you
Imagine it’s the year 2030 and you’re heading to the airport to catch a flight. At the curb, you hop onto a Segway-like scooter that will serve as your personal airport vehicle. It scans data from your phone to determine your gate number and glides in and out of massive elevator banks—no escalators—to move between check-in and security floors. Along the way, a machine scans your face to verify your identity and directs you to an individual security tunnel where you self-screen your luggage. None of this is science fiction. Within six years, architecture firm Gensler says it will install such a prototype at a major North American airport, including all of the above features. “Airports are starting to shift toward autonomy,” says Ty Osbaugh, who is heading up the project as Gensler’s global cities sector leader. Airport innovation is happening faster than we think, he says, foreseeing a focus on self-service in keeping with an already dominant lifestyle that prefers digitization to real-life interactions. This is not a novel idea. Use of biometric technologies has grown steadily at airports for years, and self-serve security checkpoints have already begun use in experimental pilot programs (typically for pre-screened travelers) in such major cities as New York, Dubai and Tokyo. There’s business justification for all this that goes well beyond convenience and modernization. As airport terminals lengthen to accommodate larger airplanes—which need wider spaces between gates to be able to maneuver in and out of parking spaces—airlines have noticed that passengers are struggling to get to their gates on time, resulting in missed flights and connections. Technological enhancements can help passengers reach gates on time—and make quick connections—making airline operations smoother and more efficient. Osbaugh says these changes will eventually become standard practice in the industry. Updating an existing airport terminal is time-consuming, expensive work that often costs hundreds of millions of dollars—and sometimes billions, as with New York-area airports Newark International (EWR) and LaGuardia (LGA), which both debuted facilities last year after massive, 10-figure renovations. <br/>
https://portal.staralliance.com/cms/news/hot-topics/2024-02-22/general/the-five-most-exciting-innovations-coming-to-an-airport-near-you
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The five most exciting innovations coming to an airport near you
Imagine it’s the year 2030 and you’re heading to the airport to catch a flight. At the curb, you hop onto a Segway-like scooter that will serve as your personal airport vehicle. It scans data from your phone to determine your gate number and glides in and out of massive elevator banks—no escalators—to move between check-in and security floors. Along the way, a machine scans your face to verify your identity and directs you to an individual security tunnel where you self-screen your luggage. None of this is science fiction. Within six years, architecture firm Gensler says it will install such a prototype at a major North American airport, including all of the above features. “Airports are starting to shift toward autonomy,” says Ty Osbaugh, who is heading up the project as Gensler’s global cities sector leader. Airport innovation is happening faster than we think, he says, foreseeing a focus on self-service in keeping with an already dominant lifestyle that prefers digitization to real-life interactions. This is not a novel idea. Use of biometric technologies has grown steadily at airports for years, and self-serve security checkpoints have already begun use in experimental pilot programs (typically for pre-screened travelers) in such major cities as New York, Dubai and Tokyo. There’s business justification for all this that goes well beyond convenience and modernization. As airport terminals lengthen to accommodate larger airplanes—which need wider spaces between gates to be able to maneuver in and out of parking spaces—airlines have noticed that passengers are struggling to get to their gates on time, resulting in missed flights and connections. Technological enhancements can help passengers reach gates on time—and make quick connections—making airline operations smoother and more efficient. Osbaugh says these changes will eventually become standard practice in the industry. Updating an existing airport terminal is time-consuming, expensive work that often costs hundreds of millions of dollars—and sometimes billions, as with New York-area airports Newark International (EWR) and LaGuardia (LGA), which both debuted facilities last year after massive, 10-figure renovations. <br/>
