It appears it’s not just Heathrow Airport that’s making significant investments; Gatwick Airport’s CIO has announced a range of new measures that not only focuses on providing a unique, streamlined passenger experience, but also improving security at the airport. In the past, there appears to have been confusion as to who’s in control of which part of the passengers route through the airport… the airline or the airport. But it seems that the airport is starting to take control of the situation and has started to make investments into next-generation technology in order to improve every part of the passenger’s journey, on the ground anyway.
The first area that’s received a technological boost is the passenger arrival area at the South Terminal. Side by side with Norwegian’s self-service bag drop and BA’s self-tagging facility, Gatwick Airport has a new bag drop system of their own – a ‘common-use’ system that will provide the service to passengers no matter which airline they are flying with. As part of the ongoing trial that was firstly with EasyJet and Flybe, the airport has worked with Phase 5 Technology to perfect the system.
The airport’s North Terminal has also benefited from new technology; combining their bag drop service with their iris scanning technology. Therefore, passengers can not only drop the bags at check-in; by scanning their iris, their identity is registered against their passport, bag tag and boarding pass and enabling this form of identity to be used at every other stage of their journey through the airport. Using this technology in the future, Gatwick Airport is hoping that passengers will be able to scan their iris using a smartphone or device at home, arrive at the airport and use their iris as their identifier at each checkpoint, thereby streamlining their entire journey from the moment they leave home, to the moment they board the plane.
Addressing security, the airport installed an award-winning automated security entry system in 2012. But this has now been progressed further with the project to retrofit the new Security Max lanes moving forward to the point that the first two lanes will be functioning and available to delegates arriving to FTE in March. Trials are starting shortly and if the lanes perform to the levels expected, security throughput could potentially double with more than 400 passengers processed per lane, per hour.
All this is in addition to the 15 second-generation e-gates installed in the South Terminal immigration area at the end of last year, cutting immigration queues in and improving the process for e-passport holders, and a range of other technological advances throughout the airport. It sounds like the airports of the UK are moving rapidly into the 22nd century, let alone the 21st century!