Incheon airport creates world’s 1st alliance with French and Dutch airports
Incheon International Airport Corp.
has created a cooperate alliance with European airports in France and the Netherlands. It is the first time that airport companies have formed an alliance, although there are many alliances among global airlines.
The Incheon international airport announced on Tuesday that it will create the Leading Airport Alliance with Royal Schiphol Group of the Netherlands and the French Groupe ADP. The three airport companies have been sister airports since 2011 and strategic partners since 2014.
With the new Leading Airport Alliance, the three companies announced a set of innovation initiatives to speed up the transition to sophisticated and smart airports by responding to the fourth industrial revolution preemptively.
The alliance plans to share innovative information technologies with regard to airport operations in safety and security areas as well as best practices for adopting new technologies. They also agreed to standardize new technologies being introduced to the airports including robotics such as guiding robot, cleaning robot and Internet of Things. Applications of these technologies may include biometric boarding system and emergency response training using virtual and augmented reality (AR and VR).
Royal Schiphol Group operates four airports — Amsterdam Schiphol, Rotterdam Hague, Eindhoven and Lelystad in the Netherlands — and French Groupe ADP runs three airports including Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Paris-Orly and Paris-Le Bourget.
Im-Soo Jeong imsoo@donga.com
source : https://tinyurl.com/yckdpg45
Nice Airport invites you to use Facebook Messenger to communicate
Do you need information about your flight,
accessing the airport or booking your parking space? Get an immediate response thanks to Facebook Messenger. Nice Côte d’Azur Airport has made a closer link with its passengers. Visit the airport’s Facebook page to discover the chat-bot via Messenger : https://www.facebook.com/aeroportnice…
The Largest Airport In The World To Open In 2019 In Beijing
The world’s largest airport is going to open in Beijing in 2019
and it is the work of the late renowned architect Zaha Hadid. The brand new airport claims to be the biggest, according to a report released by Reuters with the unofficial current name Beijing New Airport.
Daxing district is going to be the home of the new airport and will be serving the constantly growing needs that Beijing has in regards to air transport. Civil aviation presence is going to be drastically increased for the entire country because of the addition. China Easter Airlines and China Southern Airlines are set to consider the new airport as their home, according to a statement made by the National Development And Reform Commission.
The entire SkyTeam Alliance will be housed under a single roof thanks to the airport. This allows really easy flight connections for all the passengers. BuroHappold Engineering, which is a part of the consortium team winning the competition to design some space elements, various different expansive and open interiors are going to be present. This is a signature of Zaha Hadid and it is great to see that it is considered by the remaining architects.
Zaha Hadid was responsible for the design of the new airport’s main terminal building. Civic gardens are going to be present, together with separate areas servicing passengers for domestic and international flights. The building is really compact, even if the area will be open. The main focus with the terminal was to reduce travel times for passengers.
On the Zaha HAdid Architecture site it was stated that the airport terminal features an overall symmetry that connects with flowing and interconnected forms in order to create a composition that is fluid and that can evoke balance and harmony, two elements really common in the Chinese landscapes. Materials and colors chosen will be connected with traditional Chinese culture.
Various interesting innovative design features are expected in the huge 700,000 square meters terminal. This includes 6 curved spikes included in the central hub and walkaways that are connecting different points with the purpose of making navigation much simpler.
Not much is known about the different amenities available. However, based on the size of the new Beijing Airport it is expected to feature all that is needed for all types of passengers. This should include restaurants, waiting areas, the possibility to rent cars and stay safe on the roads leading out of the airport, souvenir shops and more.
4 runways will be functional when the airport officially opens. 2 extra opening phases are going to open extra areas. At the end of the opening the airport will be able to deal with 100 million passengers every single year. The airport will be connected to the railway station system of the country to allow easy transportation to other parts of Beijing.
Travel times are obviously going to be eased, given the size of the new airport. Statistics show that the Capital International Airport in Beijing is the second busiest in the entire world. The addition of the largest airport in the world should help.
source : https://tinyurl.com/y6vz9okj
Stanley Robotics – Automated Valet Parking Service
Stanley Robotics is a French robotics startup
created in January 2015 and developing an automated valet service with robots that can move any car.
The 3 founders, Clément Boussard (CEO), Aurélien Cord (CTO) and Stéphane Evanno (COO), all have backgrounds in the automobile industry and leading French institutes of research in self-driving vehicles.
This service will make it easier on the one hand to drop off cars and will optimise car park capacities on the other.
See more: http://stanley-robotics.com
Many Airline Passengers Still Prefer Interacting With Employees Instead of Technology
It’s 2017. According to SITA, 98 percent of airline passengers fly with at least one mobile device.
It’s amazing that so many passengers still prefer to the face-to-face experience at airports. It’s a lot slower than self-service, and often less effective.
Airline passengers who use mobile phones or self-service kiosks to handle simple tasks at airports, such as checking in for flights or dropping off checked luggage, are happier than customers who prefer face-to-face interactions, according to a new survey from SITA, a company that provides technology solutions to carriers.
Self-service options are almost always faster for travelers, and in some cases, passengers using mobile apps may access information easier than airport employees. An app, for example, might tell a passenger a flight is delayed before an agent knows it. And a good app allows passengers on delayed or canceled flights to rebook themselves quickly.
Sometimes apps even offer more options than airport agent would.
“Passengers are not just carrying their devices — they are happy to use them throughout the journey,” SITA said in its report.
Amazingly, however, a significant number of passengers still rely on airline employees for help at airports, SITA’s survey found. Nearly half of passengers said they usually check-in face-to-face with airline employees in an airport lobby, with 28 percent using the Web, 15 percent preferring a kiosk, and 5 percent using a mobile phone app.
Meanwhile, more than four in five customers still speak to an agent to check bags, even though many airlines have self-service bag drops.
In its annual survey, SITA asked questions about air travel to more than 7,000 passengers flying full-service and low-cost airlines from 17 countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. To participate, a traveler had to fly at least once in the past three months.
Over time, SITA predicts more customers will prefer self-service, not only for check-in and baggage tagging, but also for other elements, such boarding, and even post-arrival baggage tracking. According to SITA, travelers have the devices they need to handle most tasks themselves, with 98 percent carrying at least one mobile device, and 70 percent carrying two.
Then again, mobile may not be the future. SITA also expects more passengers will embrace biometrics so they can move even faster through airports and passport control. It found 57 percent of passengers would use a biometric token for their next flight, assuming it helped them move faster from the airport lobby to the gate. Still, SITA noted that about one third of passengers have privacy concerns about biometric technology, which includes facial scans, fingerprints and iris scans.
SITA has been trying to sell airlines and airports on biometric token technology that makes most airport document checks unnecessary. So far, the service has few customers, but in one trial, in Brisbane, Australia, SITA has been using facial recognition technology to speed the travel journey. SITA is also helping JetBlue with a biometrics trial in Boston that will allow some customers to board without showing a boarding pass or a passport.
Here are some highlights from the survey.
and get the full support from article’s source : https://tinyurl.com/ybs9ss8f
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Houston airports debut first app-free indoor mobile navigation
Dive Brief:
- George Bush Intercontinental Airport and William P. Hobby Airport in Houston began providing an indoor navigation service to help smartphone users find their way to gates, ground transportation, ticket kiosks, shops, restaurants and security checkpoints, according to a press release by the airport system. The turn-by-turn wayfinding technology developed by San Francisco’s LocusLabs doesn’t require a separate app download to work on smartphones, the first of its kind in the world, per the press release.
- By visiting the website fly2houston.com on a mobile browser, a traveler can see a map of the airports that indicates a user’s location with a blue dot. As a person walks around, the navigation tool provides live directions on the quickest way to reach a destination inside the airport. It also shows the estimated time needed to walk to the endpoint.
- The Houston Airport System, which runs the facilities, said airport maps are some of the most frequently visited pages on the fly2houston.com website. George Bush Intercontinental Airport is the 14th busiest in the U.S. and 43rd busiest in the world with 41.6 million passengers a year, according to Airports Council International. William P. Hobby Airport had 12.9 million visitors last year.
The Houston Airport System is showing another way that airports can provide indoor navigation information without requiring travelers to download an app that they’ll likely use just once or twice a year. The mobile web solution provides the flexibility to work with a variety of smartphones with different platforms or versions of operating systems.
The navigation app may eventually give retailers and restaurants in the airport opportunities to highlight special deals, which is likely to be welcome news for businesses in the airports as North American airport retail sales are estimated to more than double to $9.9 billion by 2020 from $4.2 billion in 2015. Reaching mobile users with an offer when they are nearby could drive traffic into retailers and restaurants.
Because airport apps aren’t nearly as popular as airline apps, which are used more often for frequent flyers loyal to one airline, more airports might strive to implement web-based location systems. Apps for the largest 25 airlines were downloaded 117 million times, or 14x as many downloads for airport apps, according to one estimate by advisers cited in Tnooz. By next year, 80% of airports will have implemented mobile apps, per a SITA survey that suggested airports are wasting money on developing apps. Retail partnerships and beacons may be ways to justify the cost and boost consumer engagement.
Earlier this month, Gatwick Airport, the second-busiest U.K. airport after Heathrow, installed 2,000 beacons to help travelers navigate through its gates, baggage claim and other facilities. The challenge with this strategy compared to what Houston is doing is that beacons require users to download an app. The beacons help to get more accurate personal coordinates on a smartphone’s GPS map, according to Media Post. It also plans to add an augmented reality (AR) feature that will help guide travelers through the airport, as well as talking to airlines about integrating the indoor navigation tool into their respective apps to push notifications like boarding alerts or flight schedule updates to travelers. Eventually, the technology will allow retailers and restaurants inside the airport to insert location-based ads into the smartphone view to promote special offers to visitors at Gatwick or Houston airports, TechCrunch reported.
Recommended Reading:
PR Newswire Houston airports to be first airports in the world to debut cutting-edge wayfinding technology
source ; https://tinyurl.com/y7grew6p
New facial-recognition technology deployed at Bush International Airport
New facial-recognition technology deployed at Bush International Airport.
HOUSTON – Certain international travelers leaving George Bush Intercontinental Airport are going through an extra security check before boarding their plane.
IAH is now one of seven airports in the country using facial-recognition cameras to check passengers who are leaving the country.
The new technology is part of a growing pilot project run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP.
The pilot program began in June 2016 at Hartsfield Jackson International Airport in Atlanta. In 2004, Congress tasked CBP with taking biometric information from travelers leaving and entering the country.
“In 2004, we began taking fingerprints and as technology has evolved, we’ve evolved with it,” said Alicia Tellez, chief CBP officer.
“This is an extra layer of information and this system does work with all our other databases,” Tellez said.
That means the extra check is also looking for those who may be wanted and are trying to sneak out of the country.
Since this is a pilot program, the United Airlines flight from Houston to Tokyo is the only one using the camera for now.
Customs has deployed this technology at other airports and plans to expand this type of check for those leaving the United States.
Ministry unveils plan for facial recognition to speed up airport entry/exit process
The Justice Ministry announced Tuesday a plan to introduce a new type of unmanned gate at major airports to fast-track Japanese passengers while allowing more officials to screen foreign nationals as a measure to counter terrorism and block illegal entry.
“By smoothing out the immigration entry and exit processes for Japanese people, we can have more immigration officials run investigations on foreign nationals,” said a news release distributed by the ministry on Tuesday.
With 40 million travelers from overseas expected to come into Japan in 2020, and 60 million expected in 2030, it’s easy to predict that airports will be short on immigration staff, a Justice Ministry official said.
The new gates will feature cameras that take photographs of passengers. By using facial recognition technology, they will match the photo with image data retrieved from passports. The whole process will take less than 15 seconds.
The ministry introduced similar unmanned gates that use fingerprint authentication in 2007, but less than 10 percent of passengers used them in 2016. It’s possible the gates were unpopular because they required users to register their fingerprints before their flights, the official said. The new gates will not require such advance registration.
Three units of this type are scheduled to be installed at Haneda airport in Tokyo as early as in this October, to be used by Japanese passengers on arrival.
The gates are scheduled to be introduced at three other international airports — Narita, Chubu and Kansai — by the end of 2018.
To be able to install the new gates, Article 54 of the Ordinance for Enforcement of the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act must be amended to allow machines to store disembarkation records on passports, rather than the data being recorded by immigration officials manually applying a stamp.
The amended law is scheduled to be enforced from mid-October, according to the official. The ministry is accepting public comments on the amendment until Aug. 3.
For foreign nationals who come to Japan often on business, automated gates have been available at major airports since last November.
However, an applicant must meet certain requirements to register as a trusted traveler, including being employed full time at a public or private organization for a year and having visited Japan at least twice within the 12-month period prior to arrival.
source ; https://tinyurl.com/y8wglccq