HOW AIRPORTS ARE GETTING SMARTER
Discover the latest smart airport technology that’s making air travel a safer and smoother process
WORDS AILSA HARVEY
DID YOU KNOW? Autonomous pods at Heathrow Airport in London have replaced 50,000 annual bus journeys
Every day, enough passengers filter through the world’s airports to fill the seats of around 100,000 commercial flights. With thousands of people airborne at any given time, every process at an airport needs to be executed with efficiency and safety. This includes swift transportation from car parks and entrances to terminal buildings, regimented air-traffic control management and thorough checks of all people and items being transported around the globe.
Airport traffic is trending upwards. As more flights are scheduled each year, airports have become more sophisticated to maintain control of departures and arrivals. In recent years, one of the most significant technological changes to take off was the conversion of air travel documentation from paper to electronic. This transition has massively reduced the time it takes to process passengers as more reliable computer systems ensure many of the manual checks at airports can be carried out by machines. In areas where human error could have devastating results, facial-recognition technology, autonomous vehicle systems and data prediction have all been welcome changes in terminals.