In this blog Carl Rogers explores the possible future of airports, examining changing technology, and how this will impact the traveler
How will airports look like in the future? In this blog we will examine changing technology, and how this will impact the traveler against three horizons 2030, 2040 and 2050.This article has been prompted by a significant new piece of research fromAirports Council International (ACI) , composed in collaboration with theOliver Wyman Forum andSaudi Arabia Ministry of Tourism and titledThe Evolution of Airports – A Flight Path to 2050 .
The ACI report dives into the current state of our industry, exploring the ways in which we move around the world and shedding light on how this might change in the coming decades.
The report argues, as global priorities shift and new technologies become available, we will see significant technological evolution across the airport sector - and this work is a great place to start as we respond to that change. It explores the trends that will impact on airports, what airports will look like by mid-century and the steps airport leaders, governments and regulators should take to prepare for the way forward.
With Amadeus’ position at the center of the modern travel ecosystem, we are already preparing for this future. We are uniquely placed to anticipate changes in the travel ecosystem, develop new and innovative solutions and work with our partners to smooth this transition.
The ACI report examines the evolution of the airport over three horizons – 2030, 2040 and 2050. Below we take each in turn, exploring how changes seen today will accelerate those that are possible tomorrow.
Technological innovation
ACI finds biometrics will be a key driver of innovation by 2030, with digital identity management helping the industry to build a contactless end-to-end passenger experience.
By the end of the decade, more airports will have the technology in place to allow passengers to walk through check-in and immigration, into a lounge and onto a plane without the need to show their passport. At each step of the journey, AI-enabled tools will link their unique facial features to their passport for instant verification.
Today, Amadeus is helping our industry to deliver on this vision, offering an end-to-end, touch-free airport experience. Fully integrated into the existing airport environment, Amadeus’ biometric solutions cover every step of the journey. For example, atPerth Airport in Australia, we successfully demonstrated how biometric enabled touchpoints add value to the passenger, airline and airport across check-in, bag drop and boarding. In Japan, our biometric enabled kiosks and auto bag drops allow for the seamless enrollment of passengers within the Face Express service at Narita. At the same time, in Hong Kong, our kiosk solution enables passengers to be enrolled into the Airport Authority of Hong Kong’s Flight Token service – one of the most comprehensive and widely praised implementations of the IATA OneID program.
Elsewhere, Amadeus enabled systems have biometrically boarded one million passengers in the United States in 2022, with the figure set to grow significantly this year as the recovery accelerates.
Data will be crucial to bringing this vision to life. Passengers, airports, regulators and members of the wider industry must work together to design an architecture that allows information exchange across multiple stakeholders while maintaining security. With our position at the center of the travel ecosystem, Amadeus will be a strong candidate to act as a conduit for this process.
Looking ahead to 2040, the capabilities of unmanned aerial drones will continue to grow, further accelerating adoption. These tools will be used widely within the airport to carry out aircraft and runway inspections, assess perimeter security and runway/tarmac conditions more quickly than humans by capturing high-resolution images and videos. However, given the high level of security around airports, concerns on how to deal with unauthorized drones will need to be addressed.
Trends developing now will reach maturity, with touchless travel digital IDs replacing paper passports entirely over the next two decades, while biometric technology means passenger processing, including security clearance, will become a completely uninterrupted and touchless journey conducted at walking pace.
WithAmadeus Traveler Ready we are fast-tracking change in this area. Today, travelers typically have to share the same identity details at numerous stages of their journey: check-in, baggage drop, airport security, boarding and at hotel reception, for example. With our new solution, stakeholders can automate and digitalize this verification process, removing manual frictions across the journey.
Finally, by 2050 the passenger processing experience will “feel like a walk in the park,” compared to today, according to ACI. Fully autonomous and dispersed terminals, with automated processes for check-in, baggage drop, immigration and boarding will be the norm thanks to facial recognition technology.
As an industry we are taking the first steps towards this direction, with Amadeus creating the solutions to bring these ambitions to reality – but what will the changes mean for the passenger?
Passenger experience revolution
By the end of the decade, the expectation will be that the integration of the new technologies outlined above will enable airports to deliver passengers a customized, on-demand services to improve their experience.
An airport will remain an important touchpoint for increasingly multi-modal traveler journeys to their destination of choice, so it’s important to get this integrated experience right.
By 2040, the airport experience will be more of a service-oriented one, including integrated journey planning and quick security, while by 2050 ‘zero-queue terminals’ could be a reality, with customized and pre-planned processes creating a seamless journey from home to the destination and back.
Passengers will increasingly use their personal devices for travel, with apps to control every aspect of their journey and experience. Remote processing and one-stop pods will simplify boarding and security procedures.
Flexibility and adaptability will be key to many of these changes. With services moving to the cloud, we will see a reduction in the need for fixed infrastructure. Transiting an airport will be more mobile, with agents roaming terminals to deal with problems as they arise, independent of traditional check-in desks.
A great example of this is the process embarked on inCape Verde where passengers are able to check-in at a hotel lobby.
The passenger is at the heart of everything we do here at Amadeus, so we welcome the potential for new technology to improve the traveler experience.
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