What happens when all the ticket counters go away?

Kelly



The New York Times

August 5, 2001

Airlines Are Clearing a Nonstop Path to the Plane

By AILEEN CHO

At Baltimore-Washington International Airport, about 30 aviation industry
designers and contractors gathered recently to exchange ideas on how to
manage
expansion plans at their home airports.

Discussions of terminal design, rail connections and the best flooring
for automated walkways took up much of the time. Then a vendor from a
company called
the Eye Ticket Corporation rose to explain a new product that caught
everyone's attention: an optical security device that identifies
passengers by scanning
their eyeballs.

For William Fife, aviation director at DMJM & Harris, an engineering and
design company, it was a defining moment.

"If you thought about half of these things five years ago, they would
have committed you," said Mr. Fife, who has been in the airport
construction management
business for 30 years. "Technology is happening so rapidly, you can't
keep up with it."

From optical scanning ID to boarding passes printed at home, airports and
airlines are working on ways to minimize the bottlenecks for passengers
before
they board the airplane.

Buying a ticket over the Internet, a novelty just a few years ago, is now
routine for many travelers. Some airlines are moving toward complete
automation
of ticketing and baggage check-in - eliminating the ticket counters that
have been a basic part of airport architecture since commercial aviation
began.
Others are paging passengers automatically through wireless technology -
even before they arrive at the airport - to alert them of flight delays
or cancellations.

"All the airlines are working on a bunch of initiatives intended to
reduce the number of times you have to interface with an agent," said
Ginger Evans,
vice president of Carter & Burgess, a design engineering firm in Fort
Worth. "They call it `giving time back to the passenger.' "

The technological advances coincide with major expansions at many
airports - more terminal lounges, people movers, parking lots and access
roads - to handle
the crowding on the ground that has come with the crowding in the skies.

Even in a weakening economy, the air traffic has been rising. More than
715 million paying passengers are expected to board planes in the United
States
this year, a 3.1 percent increase over last year, Federal Aviation
Administration data shows. Airports Council International, a trade group
in Geneva,
said that of the 10 cities worldwide with the most air passengers last
year, seven are in the United States: New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los
Angeles, Houston,
Las Vegas and Washington.

"You have technology for service, technology for operations and
technology for expansion," said Gerald FitzGerald, president of PB
Aviation Inc., a subsidiary
of Parsons Brinckerhoff, an engineering firm based in New York. "All of
these are undergoing a lot of changes."

Alaska Airlines has 374 self-serve kiosks where passengers can buy
tickets and check in for their flights at the airport. The airline says
the machines
are now used by one- third of its passengers. Both Alaska and Northwest
Airlines (
news/quote)
also allow passengers to print boarding passes at home, from their
personal computers.

"Before even arriving at the airport, you are able to go to our Web site,
bring up your reservation and check-in, print out your boarding pass,"
said Jack
Walsh, spokesman for Alaska Airlines. "If you have no bags to check, you
can head straight to the gate, show your ID and head down the jetway. On
the other
hand, if you have bags to check, we're doing things to facilitate that."

In Anchorage and Portland, Ore., Alaska is testing a self-service kiosk
that prints a passenger's luggage destination tags. The passenger
attaches the tag
to the bag, drops it on a conveyor belt and heads to the plane.

At San Jose International Airport in California, American Airlines is
testing a telephone check-in service, self-serve ticketing and even
roving agents,
who use hand-held computers to issue boarding passes. At La Guardia
Airport in New York, US Airways allows passengers to use Palm Pilots to
check in.

"The theory is that in 10 years we'll be wondering what to do with all
that ticket lobby space," said Kim Day, deputy executive director at Los
Angeles
World Airports, the agency that runs Los Angeles International Airport.
In fact, when Alaska Airlines rebuilds its terminal at Anchorage, it
plans to remove
the traditional row of ticket counters at the entrance. Instead, there
will be islands of kiosks.

Dan Wong, senior transportation planner at San Francisco International
Airport, said the diminished importance of ticket counters would change
the look
of an airport departure terminal.

"You'll see a huge difference," he said. "There'll be better information
displays, retail shops with the ability to transmit information to
passengers."

Some airlines are concentrating on new ways to accommodate passengers
whose flights have been delayed or canceled. United Airlines, for
example, said it
was pushing forward with a system that informs passengers by pager of the
next available flight, even if it is on another carrier.

Privacy and security, of course, are potential problems in systems that
assume that passengers will use credit cards at kiosks or have personal
information
stored on a database.

"For something to be successful, you have to have customer acceptance,"
Mr. Walsh said.

But airline officials say that if the success of Internet ticketing is
any indication, they are optimistic. And there is anecdotal evidence that
the newest
technology is a hit, at least among frequent fliers.

David Cohen, who with his brother owns a computer design business in New
York, said he had started to use the self-serve kiosks regularly. "They
speed up
the time of check- in immensely," he said. But he added, "my only concern
is that no one checked my ID; I know I am O.K., but that is a bit scary
with
other people."

Mr. Cohen said he would welcome other technology. He would gladly print
out his boarding passes at home, he said, or use eyeball-scanning
identification
at the airport.

EyeTicket is a leader in optical scanning security technology, which
identifies a person by recognizing his or her iris, the ring around the
pupil of the
eye. Stewart Mann, chief executive of the company, based in McLean, Va.,
said the technology had not been developed with a specific airport use in
mind.
But when the prototype was ready in 2000, the International Air Transport
Association was the first industry group to be given a presentation.

"Sometimes this industry is slow to change, but the fact of the matter
is, it is looking for better solutions and products," Mr. Mann said.

Last month, EyeTicket and the association announced an experiment at
Heathrow Airport, near London, in cooperation with British Airways (
news/quote)
and Virgin Atlantic Airways, to provide what it called "one stop"
passenger processing to 2,000 frequent fliers registered on a database.
Passing near a
camera, the travelers will have their identities confirmed instantly from
their iris patterns, allowing them speedy entry that bypasses customs and
immigration
bottlenecks.

Anticipating more such tests, Mr. Mann said officials at other airports
"have been opposite of skeptical - they've been as receptive as we could
hope for."

"Two years in this industry is light speed," he said, referring to the
time it took for tests of his product to begin.

Some airport logistics, of course, are less open to advancements. The
designers of the moving sidewalk at Denver International Airport,
constructed in the
1980's, made it one-third wider than most conventional conveyors, said
Ms. Evans, who oversaw the construction. That increased the comfort level
of passengers,
she added, so that they would accept "slightly higher walkway speeds."
But, she said, people movers "are not changing much in technology."

Mr. Fife, too, said that even with all the advancements, an airport's
ability to minimize crowding can go only so far. "We're not at the level
of `beam me aboard, Scotty,' " he said.


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