Air travel may soon go paperless

Around 80% of the world’s leading airports have announced plans to make air travel paperless. Checking-in will now be based on the introduction of “electronic documents” thus eliminating the need for personnel behind the counter.

Technology will also have a significant impact on actual travel. Bar-coded boarding passes will be sent directly to mobile phones, thus making air travel genuinely paperless.

A survey conducted by Airports Council International (ACI) came to the conclusion that despite worldwide recession; IT budgets for airports in 2000 were largely uninfluenced. The survey recorded responses from a 106 airports or airport groups out of 172 airports around the world. Forty-five percent of these airports surveyed, expected an increase in the budget while only 14% expected a lower budget. The IT industry catering to airports is estimated to be worth around $3billion.

Eighty percent of the airports now plan to make self-service a principal means of checking in by 2010. However, this system is already in place at almost 40% of the airports interviewed. Around 63% already have check-in kiosks, but the number is expected to rise to 90% by 2012. Kiosks will be also be introduced at places such as common bag drop locations (up to 48% by 2012), Automated boarding gates(42% by 2012), Self-service kiosk for passenger transfer services (39 % by 2012), Self-service kiosk to report lost baggage (36% by 2012).

Unfortunately, bypassing check-in counters may result in longer waiting queues at security screening and baggage drop-off areas. Therefore, wait times at various check points will be mapped by the airports, using video analytics (60%), RFID(43%) and Bluetooth techniques(27%).

Mobility in services is considered as the premier trend affecting IT airport industry. Initially it will encompass ticketless travel using Bar Coded Boarding Passes(BCBP), but will soon affect areas such as aircraft maintenance too.