And what happens to people like me.  Because of albinism, I don't and can't
open my eyes wide.  And what happens to people who have artificial eyes.  I
guess there will still have to be some human ticket agents around.

Jan Knuth

>===== Original Message From Kelly Pierce <[log in to unmask]> =====
>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.
>
>
>VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
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Janice L. Knuth, MSW, LSW
Training Coordinator
Pennsylvania's Initiative on Assistive Technology
Institute on Disabilities
Temple University
1301 Cecil B. Moore Ave., 423 RA
Philadelphia, PA 19122
215 204-5397
[log in to unmask]


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
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 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
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