Automated passenger handling is designed to streamline the check-in, immigration and boarding process at airports. Innovative self-boarding and one-way corridor technology from Kaba offers airports, airlines and governments unrivalled safety, reliability and cost-efficiency.
Automation is playing an increasingly important role in everyday life and is set to revolutionise passenger processes in airports.
With regard to the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) Fast Travel Initiative, passengers are being invited more and more to carry out tasks on their own by means of self-service devices such as check-in kiosks, self-boarding gates or automated border control, thus endowing the individual with greater autonomy within the passenger process. This development is designed to disburden personnel so that they can concentrate on crucial and demanding tasks related to passenger handling.
Airports, airlines and governments each have their own requirements relating to automation of the check-in, immigration and boarding process. Passengers require a safe, quick, reliable and user-friendly process in order to board a flight conveniently. Airlines as service providers and sellers rely on a quick, fail-safe process that provides constantly updated check-in and boarding status information, without any additional workload or staff.
As the providers of infrastructure, airports focus on a fail-safe system that doesn’t hamper or harm users, and may easily be integrated into existing infrastructure and data systems. The security industry provides specialised tools for these purposes, the core components of which are sensor-controlled access gates and biometric recognition devices. Self-boarding, boarding pass control, border crossing and airside separation are classical fields of process automation at airports.
Self-boarding technology
Self-boarding is one of the most obvious tasks that has been assigned to the passenger by means of automation. The introduction of the 2D barcode has facilitated the employment of self-boarding gates with barcode readers. One of the advantages is the fast and reliable validation of ticket data and eligibility using print-outs or digital mobile devices. The self-boarding process may even start with a check-in procedure at a kiosk where ticket, passport and select biometric features are linked to each other, resulting in the direct assignment of boarding eligibility to one individual.
One of the cutting-edge solutions is the Argus HSB-M03 self-boarding gate from Kaba. Connected to an appropriate face recognition system, it can facilitate self-boarding without any direct contact with the gate, just by a mere look into a camera. It also offers an ideal solution for identity verification at the gate and great potential for accelerated processing.
Boarding pass control and crossing
If the link between airline ticket, passport image and biometric features is made, air-side access may be granted in the same way, and the same type of access control gates can be used for this task. Automatic units are required to support airport staff in checking boarding cards of passengers passing from the public side into the security areas of the air side more efficiently. The supervising staff members will therefore be able to attend people who need special treatment; for example handicapped and elderly people, or families with babies.
Today, even traditional manual processes like border crossing – at arrival or departure – can be automated. For legal reasons, this process usually has to be even more secure than self-boarding or access to the air side. Therefore, the border crossing units are usually equipped with two sets of interlocking doors, as are Kaba’s sensor barrier solutions for border crossing.
The units feature a document reader for electronic passports and a face-recognition system. When facial features have been matched to the passport image and a positive eligibility check has been carried out, the passenger may pass the gate unhindered. Otherwise, the person is guided to the nearby border crossing officials who will then follow the manual procedure.
Air-side separation
Passenger handling at airports does not end with boarding and departure; upon arrival, smooth and quick processing is also required. One critical point is the crossing from air side to land side. Since the air side is a restricted area where only entitled individuals are allowed, it has to be thoroughly separated and controlled. One-way corridors are a proven way of performing this task, ensuring a continuous passenger flow towards the land side, while at the same time preventing unauthorised access to the air side.
Kaba’s Orthos PIL-M02 one-way corridors are successfully employed in many airports around the world. Their modular design makes them the ideal solution for any airport environment, even with limited space.
Security and access control automation helps manage increasing traffic. It is fail-safe in terms of validation and provides passenger safety, convenience, speedy processing and continuously updated information on check-in and boarding status. Kaba has teamed up with the leading integrators and system providers in the airport industry to offer the best-fitting solutions in this field.
Thus, technology changes passenger experience and improves airport and airline service chains, creating more and better business in the long term.