SPECIAL REPORT: IT It tells him that he has eighty five minutes before he needs to be at the
gate and that the current wait time for physical security ranges from seven to eleven minutes depending on which checkpoint he chooses. Plenty of time then to drink his coffee before checking his bag. Max is lucky that St Louis is one of the airports with an intelligent
baggage system. This investment is one of the reasons that Lambert has seen a major revival in traffic in recent years. At other airports, baggage must be delivered to fixed locations according to the airline, but here all Max has to do is click a button on his MiCom that simultaneously alerts the baggage system that his suitcase is coming and enters his flight and destination details in the case’s memory. The case is a ‘3Chip’ model that contains RFID, GPS and GSM chips as
well as a basic memory/processor module. It cost twenty dollars more than a dumb case, but he is convinced it was worth it. It can alert airport systems to its presence at all times and in the event that it is mishandled at any stage, it can detect the fact and make a call to Max’s MiCom and the airline’s baggage tracking system. If it has gone very far astray, the GPS chip will ensure that the message
contains full location information. Bag drop is fully automated. Access is via a number of cabinets located
in the airport concourse as well as in many of the shops and restaurants. Passengers needing assistance can use drop-points located near to the airline service desks. The bag-drop detects the approach of his case and opens its front
doors. A dialogue between case and drop-point ensures that the journey is correctly programmed and that the airline is expecting it. As the doors close, Max is reasonably confident that the next time he
sees his bag it will be safely in London. On leaving the drop-point he notices a passenger using a brightly
coloured gadget to enter baggage information. They are one of the minority that declines to own a personal device, and so uses a standard airline one that is issued when they make a booking, and it enables access to all the systems along the way until it is surrendered at the final arrival airport. One in every five of these devices fails to return to the airline but they
are extremely cheap and are subsidised by the advertising they carry, so nobody really minds. Baggage safely delivered, Max has a little time on his hands. He would
have had even more if he had used a personal baggage service to pick up his bag from home and deliver it to his mother’s house in London. These services have grown rapidly in recent times as joint ventures
between the airlines and the package delivery companies. The cost to passengers is slightly lower than the cost of checking a bag at the airport as
the airlines have made a concerted move to reduce baggage handling, the most costly and error-prone aspect of airport operations. Max uses his time to browse the shops. Here MiCom acts as a
stored-value device that he can use for small purchases or as the key to his credit accounts for bigger items. It’s all locked down by biometric security so he doesn’t feel that there is
any great risk to using it – certainly much less than the risk of carrying old-fashioned cash. Even the smallest retailers accept electronic payments – directly to personal devices – if they don’t have an EPOS system. When the MiCom buzzes again it’s time to go through security. The
screen tells him that checkpoint seven has the shortest line so he steps onto the moving walkway. As he approaches, his MiCom talks to the security system, giving permission for it to look him up in the national traveller database. A camera checks his retina pattern and the one-way door opens
smoothly. As a member of the national trusted traveller programme, Max is rarely subjected to physical security checks. The doorway contains magnetic detectors and chemical sniffers
that would switch him to a lane with a human guard if they detected any anomalies. Otherwise he is free to step onto the walkways beyond, going to the left or right according to directions on the screen of his MiCom. The walkway delivers him to a gate area where the airline’s departure
control system has a node that detects his MiCom and registers his arrival at the gate. A further sensor in the door of the aircraft will determine that he is actually on board and kick off the e-ticket reconciliation processes. Max, of course, is completely oblivious to this as he settles in to his
business class seat, which detects the MiCom and presents a tailored menu of in flight entertainment options on its screen. Max is a frequent flyer and sometimes thinks he spends half his life up
in the air. Now and again he reflects on how simple the whole thing has become during his adult lifetime. Mostly though, he just sits back and thinks about more important things. So now he takes out his MiCom and starts searching for his mother’s
birthday present!
About the author Ian Tunnacliffe is an analyst with UK-based research company and travel IT specialist Travel Technology Research Limited. Visit
www.t2rl.com/about/ for more information.
AW
AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2010
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