OPINION Airport World
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The value of IT A
Airport World editor, Joe Bates, considers how new technology continues to change the way the world communicates and does business.
s incredible as it sounds now, when I was a local newspaper reporter in the early 1980s, I actually went on strike to try and
prevent the introduction of ‘new technology’ into the workplace. The new technology concerned
revolutionised the way newspapers and magazines were printed, but as we didn’t really understand the benefi ts at the time and feared for our jobs, we tried to reject progress to maintain the status quo. We lost, of course, and rightly so. All I can
claim in my defence, is back then was the dark ages in terms of IT. There was not a computer to be found in the offi ce, few people had heard of, let alone seen, a mobile phone and the Internet, as we know it today, hadn’t been invented. If you wanted to communicate with
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someone you basically had to pick up the phone or personally go and see them. This often meant that days, and sometimes weeks, could be spent trying to get hold of an individual, as opposed to the seconds it can take today due to IT advancements. Indeed, it is hard to imagine life today
without smartphones, laptops and other portable IT devices that make communicating with others so quick and easy. Emails, texts, airport websites and even
social networking portals, such as Facebook and Twitter, are now routinely used by airports to communicate and do business with their customers around the world. Aviation has, of course, long been a
pioneer in the adoption of new technologies ranging from some of the most sophisticated security systems on the planet to state-of- the-art self-service equipment. Other technologies commonly found at
airports in 2010 include biometrics, RFID and WiFi, often for use by both passengers and staff. Aviation’s pioneering ways in fact mean
that today’s technology savvy passengers are so used to IT being an enabler that they are
likely to become ever more demanding in the years ahead. So where do airports go from here
in terms of IT developments? Will advancements in technology mean that airports look very different in 20 years time? Does ever evolving technology ensure that the ‘airport experience’ of 2030 will be unrecognisable from what we know today? We consider many of these issues, and
more, in this IT focused issue of Airport World, which also takes a look at what the future might bring for airport websites, baggage handling and security checkpoints. One thing that is for sure is that after the phenomenal technological advancements of the last 30 years, few people now underestimate the value of IT and the benefi ts it can bring for everyone. Finally, when thinking about what the
future might hold for aviation IT, I cannot help wondering whether planes will still have pilots in 2030. Let’s hope so, as I don’t think fl ights would quite be the same without those cosy little chats from the cockpit at 30,000 feet!
AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2010
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