Terminal operations
New cleaning technologies “Enhanced cleaning processes have a significant impact on travel safety and comfort,” acknowledges Sami Kiiskinen, vice-president of airport development at Finavia. Formerly known as the Finnish Civil Aviation Administration, Finavia is responsible for maintaining and developing Finland’s airport network. It manages 20 airports around the country, two of which focus solely on military and general aviation while the other 18 primarily serve commercial flights.
Chief among those is Helsinki Airport, the biggest and busiest airport in Finland by far – with 20 times the traffic of its closest counterpart, Oulu Airport. Roughly 90% of Finland’s total air traffic passes through Helsinki, making it the fourth busiest among Nordic countries as well. In 2019, Helsinki handled over 21.8 million passengers – of which 18.9 million were international and 2.9 million domestic. In mid-2020, Helsinki Airport began piloting a range of UVC technologies for a variety of uses intended to combat the spread of Covid-19, including security control tray cleaning, automatic disinfection equipment embedded in tray conveyors, manual disinfection using a stand-alone UVC-station, and both mechanical and UVC escalator handrail cleaning. “This new technology will help us intensify disinfection even further and improve cleaning standards. We will now be able to disinfect empty security control trays quickly after each use,” said Ulla Lettijeff, Helsinki Airport executive director for Finavia, in a press release at the time. The UVC technology is supplied by the Finnish company LedFuture, among others, and includes an LED technology-based disinfection solution. The UVC-LED solution is energy efficient, environmentally friendly and quick in comparison with traditional cleaning methods, and it is based on research by the University of Helsinki, the University of Eastern Finland and the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).
By mid-2020, the airport had already shorted cleaning cycles in the terminal premises in order to ensure cleaners surfaces and increased safety – something they had implemented at the very start of the pandemic. Similarly, enhanced mechanical washing of security control trays was rapidly implemented early in 2020, before the coronavirus had even hit Finland.
“As passenger numbers grow, enhanced cleaning is still one of the most important messages to combat Covid-19,” says Kiiskinen, acknowledging that as travel continues its recovery, new challenges will present themselves for airport operators. In order to get ahead of it, Helsinki Airport today makes full use of automated equipment in its transfer passenger security control. Its new terminal extension is set to be finalised and become fully operational by
Future Airport /
www.futureairport.com
summer 2022, and will include new “state-of-the-art” security control lines that will include UVC tray disinfection equipment, Kiiskinen adds.
A fresh coat
Beyond UVC, Helsinki has brought in a variety of other cleaning technologies to combat Covid-19 on-site. This includes Fotonit nanocoating, which greatly reduces the amount of viruses and bacteria on treated surfaces, such as check-in and bag drop kiosks, check-in and boarding gate counters, toilets and waiting area furniture. According to Kiiskinen, the coating is long-lasting, even though the furniture is wiped several times a day. Following successful trials of the technology throughout the summer, which was developed by technology company Nanoksi Finland, Finavia has now adopted the coating for use across the airport.
“The photocatalytic Fotonit coating effectively inactivates viruses and kills bacteria,” Kiiskinen explains. “The process is activated by light and air’s water vapour. Then the coating forms reactive oxygen compounds which are very short-lived, as they react with microbes and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on the surface. As a result, in this nanoscale process the microbes and VOCs decompose. The method is thoroughly researched and studied, as well as non-toxic and safe for people.” Based partly on same type of nanotechnology, Helsinki Airport has also implemented elevator air purifiers in its newest elevators. With photocatalytic oxidation – a technology developed by NASA for reducing contaminants from spacecraft cabins – it can reduce viruses and bacteria as well as odours and dust from elevators’ air.
As the pandemic has shown operators, it’s important to be able to react to unforeseen events and to be willing to try new things in order to mitigate negative affects – flexibility, in other words, is key, even if those new methods don’t always work out. “We are always looking for new technologies to make travelling via our airports as smooth and pleasant as possible,” Kiiskinen explains. “During 2020 we have also piloted a copper-coated antimicrobial tape to reduce the amount of microbes on certain surfaces as door handles, hand rails, toilet buttons and so on. Even though this coating method didn’t result in wider use, it was a good exercise in order to find suitable health safety technologies in our environment.”
The drive for innovation However, while the pandemic’s been a part of daily life for almost two years now, airport operations existed before Covid-19 and will exist long after the effects of the virus no longer hold the world in a vice-like grip. Even now, the grip has begun to
15 21.8 Number of Finavia
million
passengers who travelled through Helsinki Airport in 2019.
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