Dallas Airport is also testing new technologies around better disinfection. (FILE)
Chicago:
With the COVID-19 ravaging the aeronautical industry, airlines and airports around the world are cutting costs and stopping new spending, except in one area: reassuring passengers concerned about a pandemic on travel.
“Whatever the new standard (…), self-service will be more and more,” Sean Donohue, director general of Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport (DFW), told Reuters.
The airport is working with American Airlines – whose home base is DFW – to deploy an automatic baggage check-in, and all of its toilets will be completely contactless by the end of July with technology developed by Infax Inc. They will have sinks hands-free, soap, flush toilets and paper towel dispensers, which will be fitted with sensors to alert workers when supplies are low.
“One of the biggest complaints received by airports is about toilets,” said Donohue.
Dallas is piloting three technological options for baggage check-in: ICM from Amadeus, SITA and Materna IPS.
DFW has become the busiest airport in the world, according to figures from the travel analysis company Cirium, thanks in part to the strategy of the large American world carrier to concentrate a large part of its pandemic via its hub from Texas.
Last year, DFW rolled out biometric boarding – where your face is your boarding pass – for international flights and takes advantage of the lull in international traffic to work with US customs and border protection to use VeriScan technology for arriving passengers as well, he told me.
Delta Air Lines opened the first U.S. biometric terminal in Atlanta in 2018, and some airports in Europe and Asia also use facial recognition technology. This, however, raised concerns, a study by the United States government revealing racial prejudice in technology and the European Union earlier this year considered banning it in public places for reasons of confidentiality.
Dallas Airport is also testing new technology around better disinfection, starting with ultraviolet technology which can kill germs before they circulate in the HVAC system.
But it also deployed electrostatic nebulizers and hired a “successful team” of 150 people who cross the terminals to physically disinfect very sensitive areas.
“Technology is essential because it can be very effective,” said Donohue, but customers “being able to see what’s going on are also reassuring.”
DFW has invested millions of dollars over its cleaning and sanitation budget since the start of the pandemic, while suspending approximately $ 100 million in capital programs and reducing its costs by approximately 20%. operating in the second half, because it responds to the blow of COVID-19 for the industry, which, only a few months ago, was preparing for growth.
Nearly 114,000 customers passed through DFW on July 11, an improvement from 10,000 a day in April, but still roughly half of last year’s volumes.
The airport has also tested contactless technology for employee temperature controls, but currently does not plan very controversial controls for passengers, except for a federal mandate for which the United States government still has not intend to do so.
Michael Davies, who heads the New Technology Ventures program at London Business School, said that technology will be one of the many changes to the airport experience in the future, with fewer travelers in general taking look for more space and spend less time eating and shopping.
“You have put it together and it looks in some very interesting ways to the golden age of air travel,” said Davies.
(With the exception of the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
