"Technology key in airports development"

Thursday, November 24, 2011

IN FOCUS: Technology key in airports development 
By  Gillian Jenner
Airline Business


Meeting future demand, be it increasing numbers of ­passengers and their
ever-smarter mobile devices or airline business partners seeking to improve
efficiency, is a critical preoccupation for many airport IT bosses. 

Their vision of an integrated airport ­environment that offers a seamless
customer experience is edging closer to realisation. Airports around the
globe are reporting successes over the past year focused on IT
infrastructure upgrades, common-use and self-service, and mobile services
for both passengers and staff. 

Combine these wins with, admittedly nascent, activity around in e-gates,
passenger flow management, radio frequency identification (RFID) and the
toolkit for enhancing ­performance is taking shape. 

However, the pace of technological change is picking up all the time, so
working out how to prepare for growth without creating logjams in the
current service or boxing yourself into a technological corner is no mean
feat.
 
Furthermore, the astute deployment of technology will never be enough to
fulfil the vision. Meeting future demand will require a collaborative
airport environment, which means bringing your customers, consumer and
commercial, with you on the journey.
 
The challenge of growth cannot be understated. "The fact there will be over
five billion arrivals and departures from airports this year alone means
airports must manage growth," says Ilya Gutlin, vice president of Airport
Solutions Line, SITA. "They can do this by leveraging the convergence of
three trends: passenger self-service, mobility and collaborative
decision-making to create a smart predictive environment for the most
effective flow of passengers and cargo through an airport."
 
The first stage to achieving SITA's ­"Intelligent Airport" vision is a
foundation of robust infrastructure and integrated systems. Systems and
processes that have evolved independently, or with minimal communication, or
inefficient overlaps of data and resources, "fail to address the airport as
an integrated time-based supply chain", says Gutlin. No surprise then that
74% of airports will be pumping money into refreshing their IT
infrastructure over the next three years according to the 2011 Airline
Business/SITA and ACI World Airport IT Trends Survey. 

Among those already reporting infrastructure wins is Spain's airport
authority AENA, which earlier in the year set up AENA Aeropuertos to manage
the country's 47 ­airports as a step towards part privatisation. 

A key achievement for director of ­information systems Eloy Barragán has
been adapting the enterprise systems to AENA's new model. At an airport
level, the successes have focused on supplying the IT infrastructure,
including data centre, airport operational database and flight information
displays, to new area terminals in Alicante, Santiago and La Palma. "The
benefits have been to increase ­capacity in these airports and adapt the
­systems to the new fares," he says, while ­conceding co-ordinating IT
infrastructure activities with the builders to ensure there were no delays
to the schedule was not ­without difficulty.
 
For San Diego International Airport, initiating a capital improvement
project to upgrade the airport-wide network to ensure redundancy and move
from a 1GB backbone to a 10GB backbone is already delivering benefits. "The
improved network greatly enhances the airport network reliability and
ability to ­handle newer technologies such as voice over internet protocol
telephony and network-based cameras," says Howard Kourik, director of
information technology at San Diego County Regional Airport Authority.
 
San Diego is in the throes of a $1bn "Green Build" sustainability project to
construct new gates, enhanced kerbside check-in, plus other terminal
improvements, which will increase capacity from nearly 17 million passengers
last year to 27-33 million by 2030. 

Common-use self-service is a cornerstone to the Green Build focus on more
efficient use of resources and has proved a significant achievement for
Kourik and his team, with the last year seeing them add low-cost carriers
Volaris and Spirit into the existing common-use terminal equipment (CUTE)
system at four gates. 

But the greater victory has been gaining buy-in from the airport community
to move to the IATA/ACI Common-Use Passenger Processing System (CUPPS)
standard. The upshot is after the Green Build is activated in 2013, San
Diego will provide CUPPS at 23 out of 51 gates. It will also supply a
common-use infrastructure, which will mean the IT team providing a range of
telecoms services directly to concessions and carriers that they currently
only provide to airport personnel.
 
CUPPS is not difficult technically; the real challenge comes with the move
from dedicated airline equipment to a common-use airport environment. But
mindsets in the USA are evolving rapidly on both sides from the historic
divide between government-entity-landlord airport and long-leaseholder
airline. 

"Times have changed. With airline mergers, bankruptcies, alliances, etc, the
airports' perception is that it has to think long-term about providing
service to the community, whereas the airline, of necessity, has to think
short-term about profitability," says Kourik.
 
"I foresee airports taking more and more of the tasks traditionally
defaulted to the airlines, and thus becoming fully engaged partners with the
airlines in the business of processing passengers from door-to-door. We will
also look very hard at using this technology to help generate additional
revenue: CUPPS enables us to be more financially attractive to new entrants
by reducing airline's start-up costs and personnel needs."
 
Top technology projects overall, according to this year's Airport IT Trends
Survey, are providing mobile (data capable) device-based services for staff
and offering mobile device-based services for passengers, attracting
resource from 84% and 80% respectively.
 
Mobile services are establishing themselves as a vital tool for airports to
communicate with customers in a service-centric environment, even more so
when, like Dallas-Fort Worth International (DFW), you are working through a
seven-year terminal renewal programme. Construction has been underway at
Terminal A since May and in September work started to add 54,000 square feet
of landside interior space to Terminal E. But a focus on the hospitality to
enhance services to all customers, passengers, airlines and concessions,
combined with imaginative application of mobile technology is helping DFW go
several steps further. 

Upgrading DFW's mobile site this year has increased visits by 31% to 4,000
per day. A touch-screen digital signage pilot in Terminal D, which allows
passengers to pick and choose the various places in the airport they want to
find and see where they are, has now been rolled out onto iPads and smart
phones via an app developed in-house. 

"One of the things we are focused on is how to communicate with these
customers and to co-operate with them, with their devices and needs every
day," says William Flowers, vice president of information technology systems
and chief information officer at DFW.
 
In August, DFW added social networking into the mix for the 84% of its
passengers using smart phone devices. Location-based apps Foursquare and
Facebook Places are now integrated with offers from DFW concessionaires.
This allows customers checking into these social networks in any of DFW's
five terminals to receive special deals on an offer within a few yards of
their location. In the first five weeks, there were 5,000 active check-ins
taking on concession deals.
 
"The current media interest is smart phones and the next generation, that's
all they do. And the way that information is dispersed across the world will
be through these devices. That will be the change of the future," says
Flowers. He observes: "One of the great things about technology when it's
done well is it is completely ubiquitous and invisible. So we try to make
sure when we install technology is to enhance the customer experience."
 
Mobile devices for operational staff offer considerable potential for
generating efficiencies. "Mobility will impact four million employees
working for airport operators and other companies at airports, and these
solutions deliver operational efficiency while reducing costs," says Gutlin
at SITA. "In airport ground operations, the major cost driver is employee
related; 65% to 75% of the overall cost is tied to salaries and time
compensation so productivity can be enhanced using mobile work solutions."
 
DFW senior staff have iPads to enable them to access information and make
decisions rapidly, and now the airport is piloting a project with its
customers service airport ambassadors so they can quickly call up
information to share with passengers, do surveys or take images to allow
colleagues to immediately make decisions about situations.
 
Doha International Airport is already ­reaping the customer service benefits
of ­equipping ground staff in Qatar Airways' Premium Terminal with mobile
devices to provide individual information on first and business class
passengers. 

Akbar Al Baker, chief executive for the airport and Qatar Airways, says:
"This new technology significantly personalises the service and increases
business efficiency as staff will always be able to access the latest flight
and passenger information. It will also help to cut down on printing costs."
 
The airport has been juggling making IT improvements including mobile-based
boarding cards, off-site check-in, automated baggage handling, in-line
baggage scanning combined with RFID, with readying the first phase of the
New Doha International Airport (NDIA) for completion in 2012 with an initial
capacity of 24 million passengers a year, rising to 50 million when it is
fully operational in 2015.
 
Nevertheless, upgrading on two fronts ­generates challenges. "With the NDIA
project in the advanced stage of completion, it is a challenge to balance
spending efforts and costs between strategic and tactical initiatives to
ensure smooth operations at the current Doha International Airport," says Al
Baker. 

A smooth migration of operations to NDIA will be a focus in the coming
months. And ­ongoing initiatives at Doha International will improve
operational efficiency via collaborative decision-making tools, ­biometric
technology, staff mobility and management information systems. 

Doha is also among those airports ­pioneering the way with more nascent
technology, making a significant investment in automated self-service
immigration gates for Qatar residents to support seamless travel. 

In Europe, Vienna International this autumn began installation of
self-service common-use electronic gates for self-boarding throughout its
terminals, including the new Skylink terminal project, with 92 e-gates in
operation by the time Skylink opens in 2012. These initiatives are all part
of Vienna's agenda to handle future growth. "One of our main strategies is
to increase our service quality and passenger travel experience," explains
Vienna's chief operating officer, Julian Jäger, adding, "This new boarding
solution will substantially contribute to our objectives."
 
SITA has been the airport's partner on the project and Gutlin sees e-gates
as yet another element of the intelligent airport vision to "shorten queues
and take the hassle out of the passenger experience". He adds: "Our research
shows that 70% of passengers are willing to use self-boarding."
 
Hong Kong International Airport pioneered the integration of RFID baggage
reconciliation and management and is now planning to review its use of RFID
to identify further improvements. 

"In future, this RFID technology may have much wider application in the
aviation field such as cargo handling; freight management; asset and
inventory control; passenger services and passenger tracking etc.," the
airport says. Hong Kong International Airport is investigating a number of
nascent technologies including GPS and wireless triangulation for improved
understanding of the location of both passengers and physical assets. A
real-time decision support system, based on the latest business intelligence
platforms, is under evaluation with the aim of allowing operations staff to
make critical decisions based on more data. 

"The use of technologies will help to realise the vision of an intelligent
airport through which operational stability and efficiency can be enhanced
and increase passengers' satisfaction," the airport says. "In the future, we
have plans to use more new technologies in meeting the airport's community
needs."
 
SITA's Gutlin observes: "Whether for ­tracking passenger movements,
end-to-end situational awareness of key assets and resources, or rapid
real-time collaborative decisions, new technology combined with passengers'
desire for more self-service options has the power to unite the operational
practices of airlines, airport operators, ground handlers and others within
the airport." 

IT TRENDS SURVEY: Verbatim comments
 
What have been the major successes and challenges over the last 12 months?
 
Major IT successes:
 •Self check-in and drop-off implementation process. Sorting baggage process
automation
 •Network upgrade, completion of construction and shared-use systems, mobile
website
 •The launch of the instant feedback system for customer service
 •Bar-coded boarding pass processing for security and airport fee collection
 
Major IT challenges
 •Payment card industry data security standards compliance
 •Cost cutting exercise, which resulted in many IT initiatives being
deferred to 2012
 •New projects being started without adequate information systems input
 •Mobile device connectivity - so many different devices now and coming

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