At Amadeus we recently surveyed senior airport leaders to seek their perspectives on the intersection between sustainability and technology. Many of the findings were to be expected, but there were some surprises too.
At Amadeus we recently surveyed senior airport leaders to seek their perspectives on the intersection between sustainability and technology. Many of the findings were to be expected, but there were some surprises too.
Firstly, it’s clear that sustainability is a top priority for airport leaders. Our research confirms that airports are taking concrete steps to address sustainability - nearly half have a step-by-step sustainability plan in place, and a further 45% are in the process of developing one.
It’s also clear that airports are turning to technology as a means to reach their sustainability goals. In fact, 76% of respondents confirmed that sustainability objectives are now an important driver of technology investment for their airport.
Where do airport leaders see potential for impact?
Nearly half of the airport leaders surveyed told us the biggest opportunity for their airport is facilitating airline partners to lower their carbon impact. Options include improving aircraft departure sequences to reduce fuel burn on the ground and optimizing how bags are loaded onto the aircraft to achieve better balance, which leads to more fuel-efficient flight.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for organizations that have significant ecosystems of retailers, food & beverage providers and ground operations partners, the majority of our survey respondents said the biggest impact they can deliver is through their supply-chain.
I suspect airports can have significant influence in both these areas, not least by helping to facilitate more efficient ground operations and by encouraging their eco-system to adhere to environmental standards.
How can technology help airports do more, with less environmental impact
We know the travel industry is working towards its goal to be net zero by 2050. Achieving this objective is likely to require wholesale change in the fuels and systems that power aviation - the ‘big ticket’ transformations that reduce or stop carbon being emitted in the first place. However, respondents to our survey aren’t simply waiting for these longer-term changes. They’re taking action today to reduce the carbon impact of their own operations. It’s here that they see the biggest role for technology.
When we asked airport leaders about which capabilities they are investing in to improve environmental sustainability, they pointed to cloud computing, better optimization of assets (like runways) and better harnessing data insights to improve decision-making as top near-term opportunities.
How can we use software to reduce aircraft fuel burn?
Four of every five airport leaders we surveyed said they are currently investing or planning to invest in technology that reduces unnecessary fuel burn. This is a significant opportunity to reduce aviation’s carbon impact. At Amadeus we’ve been building software to achieve this objective since the early 2000’s.
Our Altea DCS Flight Management system calculates the optimal ‘weight and balance’ for a flight, providing load controllers with precise instructions on where to place passengers’ bags in the hold to achieve more aerodynamic flight. The system also calculates the correct amount of fuel required for a given flight, ensuring aircraft are refueled optimally and not unnecessarily weighed down by excess fuel.
But fuel burn doesn’t only happen in the air, aircraft frequently need to ‘taxi’ on the ground too. Decisions must be taken about when each aircraft leaves its stand to prepare for take-off, based on operational and business considerations. Amadeus technology helps airports to take such complex decisions based on those priorities.
Increasingly, we’re working with airports to upweight sustainability in this decision-making process, so aircraft departure sequences are organized to minimize unnecessary fuel burn on the ground. Some airports we’re supporting have reduced the time aircraft wait on the ground by up to 50%.
How can we make airport technology more sustainable?
Today, the majority of the computers you can see at airport check-in desks or boarding gates run using software housed on local servers. The PCs sitting on check-in desks therefore need full processing capabilities and this set-up is connected using traditional networks. But there’s a better way.
At Amadeus we’re upgrading airports to our Airport Cloud Use Service (ACUS), so agents can access the software they need to serve passengers from the cloud instead. This helps to reduce the number of servers at an airport - instead computing tasks are handled by extremely energy efficient cloud infrastructure. Switching to ACUS has contributed to sustainability at many airports. For example, Helsinki Airport has upgraded around 400 workstations. Wellington Airport in New Zealand has been able to retire 10 servers and swap 37 traditional PCs for energy-efficient thin clients, which consume in the region of 10X less energy than traditional workstations.
How can we optimize the airport to do more with less?
Airports are complex operational ecosystems where greater insight into operations allow service providers to better collaborate and make improved decisions: in essence, airports can “do more with less” by leveraging analytics to better allocate shared resources like stands, gates, check-in counters and self-service equipment or security gates. This area of technology featured as the third ‘most implemented’ amongst our survey.
At Amadeus we’re helping airports to centralize and analyse this operational data to predict what’s likely to happen in the future, so different actors can be alerted in real-time to take improved decisions. One example is better understanding passenger demand. If the airport knows which times during the day are likely to be quiet it can power down equipment to reduce energy consumption.
Taking this concept a step further, we see potential for sustainability goals to form part of the economic incentives at the airport. We’re already deploying IoT sensors across certain airports as part of trial projects that use infra-red sensors to monitor concentration of dust particles in the air. Air pollution levels opens the door to new economic incentives, like charging based on emissions and air quality, rather than simply based on flight or passenger volumes. Similarly, if air quality levels deteriorate, then the algorithms that take operational decisions at the airport could respond by upweighting sustainability objectives in areas like sequence management to minimize ‘taxiing’ on the ground or stand and gate allocation.
The aviation industry has always responded to the needs of passengers, whether that’s inventing better aircraft or new business models to make flying more accessible. Today, travelers want to travel more sustainably, increasingly choosing their destinations and providers based on how they care for the environment and the populations. Modernizing technology at the airport can make a substantial contribution to the industry’s sustainability and that’s why we’re making it part of everything we do.
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