Airport / Ground
11 ways airlines are deploying the Apple iPad
8 August 2011 | Updated December 2011
The iPad, which began primarily as an entertainment device when it was launched in 2010, has captured the imagination of many other industries in ways that Apple never even imagined. We have reported several times on airlinetrends.com how airlines have made Apple’s versatile iPad device available to passengers in their lounges, rent them out in the air, or use them as self-service kiosk, customer survey tool, and food ordering tool. As the list of applications continues to grow, here is the latest overview of how airlines and airports are deploying the iPad worldwide.
1. Book, check-in
Cathay Pacific in July 2010 became the first airline to launch a dedicated application for the Apple iPad that lets users book Cathay Pacific flights, manage their flight booking, check the status of their flight, and check-in. Similar apps are today offered by American Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, THAI, and Alitalia.
In June 2010, Malaysia Airlines, in cooperation with SITA, introduced the world’s first airline kiosk that uses the iPad. Passengers can use the ‘MHkiosk’ to search and book flights and check-in online. The kiosks are installed at the airline’s ticket office at Kuala Lumpur’s central station.
2. Airport service
Spanish airline Iberia has equipped customer service staff at its Madrid-Barajas hub with iPads to provide them with real-time access to the information they need to make decisions and to keep passengers informed. Iberia’s so-called IBPad is loaded with 30 different applications which, according to the airline, together put the entire airport in the palm of the employee’s hand. Iberia says the IBPad has improved everyday operations and dealings with customers, boosting communications and staff decision-making autonomy, while eliminating the use of paper.
Since March 2011, so-called Changi Experience Agents (CEAs) have been walking the grounds at Singapore Changi Airport, assisting passengers with special needs, and helping passengers with wayfinding at the airport. Locating missing luggage, facilitating passengers with check-in needs and assisting transit or transfer passengers with their onward connections also form part of the CEAs’ duties. Each CEA is equipped with an iPad with which they can retrieve information, such as the latest flight updates, store location, check-in gates, etcetera. The CEAs are on duty all day except from 1am – 6am when passenger traffic is low.
3. Airport lounge
To keep passengers entertained whilst waiting for their flight, several airlines have made iPads available in their lounges. Since July 2010, KLM offers 8 iPads in each of its two lounges at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Lounge guests can use the device to access the Internet, watch content from the airlines’s IFE programming, play games, view KLM images and use a series of pre-installed apps. Cathay Pacific, meanwhile, offers 21 Wi-Fi enabled iPads in its ‘The Cabin’ lounge, which opened in early October 2010. The devices come pre-loaded with apps such as newspapers, magazines and games. Other airlines, such as ANA and airBaltic, also make iPads available upon request to lounge guests at respectively Tokyo Haneda and Riga. Read full article »
Turkish Airlines goes ‘Byzantine chic’ with its new lounge at Istanbul Ataturk Airport
1 August 2011 | Ambitious Turkish Airlines (THY), Europe’s fourth biggest airline and voted best airline in Europe in the 2011 Skytrax survey, has seen passengers soar as a result of an aggressive strategy to turn Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport into a hub for passengers travelling between Europe, Asia and Africa. One third of THY’s passengers currently transits in Istanbul and the airline plans to double this in the near future. To offer the rapidly growing number of passengers a better experience on the ground, Turkish Airlines has just opened a renovated and expanded lounge at Istanbul Airport.
Byzantine chic
The large, 3,000 m2 lounge (nearly three times the size of the former 1100m2 lounge) can accomodate 2,000 passengers per day and is divided in several sections, among which are a billiard hall and library, a TV wall, business centre, and a play room for children. The lounge also includes private relaxation rooms, showers with special toiletry kits, and a private infant room.
Catering in the lounges is provided by gourmet catering company Turkish Do&Co and passengers can help themselves on an extensive menu of hot and cold dishes, pastry, while a Turkish pizza (pide) kitchen prepares fresh pizzas on the spot. Besides a fresh juice bar, the beverage section offers Turkish brands such as Uludağ soda and Efes beer.
The design of Turkish Airlines’ lounge oozes an ambience of ‘Byzantine chic’ with curved arches that reflect the airline’s Ottoman roots (see also our recent whitepaper for more on how airlines can use their heritage to differentiate the passenger experience). The lounge also features a 150-year old olive tree and automatic piano that reportedly allows passengers to connect their iPod into to have it play their music. The lounge is accessible to Turkish Airlines’ business class passengers as well as and elite-tier members of THY and Star Alliance loyalty programs.
Read full article »
Amsterdam Airport offers transit passengers a city tour by amphibious bus-boat
26 July 2011 | Airports that heavily depend on transfer traffic, such as Seoul Incheon and Hong Kong International offer layover tours of the city, so passengers with several hours to kill before their connecting flight departs can get a taste of their transit destination. Changi Airport and Turkish Airlines even offer passengers a quick tour of respectively Singapore and Istanbul for free. Now, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, where 40 percent of arriving passengers connects to another flight, has come up with a concept for passengers in transit to experience the city in a very original way.
Floating Dutchman
In a partnership between Schiphol Airport, local canal cruise company Lovers and the City of Amsterdam, an amphibious bus-boat vehicle, dubbed the ‘Floating Dutchman’, has been launched that offers travellers an opportunity to explore the city in a short span of time. Passengers with a layover of at least 4 hours can hop on to the bus-boat from the airport, take a tour of the city and return back to the airport for their connecting flight. The bus-boat has been built by a consortium of companies, called Dutch Amphibious Transport Vehicles, of which canal cruise company Lovers is a co-owner.
From July 20th on, the Floating Dutchman departs from Schiphol Airport by road into Amsterdam’s city centre, where it ‘splashes’ into the canals at a specially prepared zone to set off for a 45 minute boat tour of the city’s canals. After the trip, the vehicle emerges from the water and continues its journey back to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Images and a video of the tour here and here).
Read full article »
Airports experiment with the latest virtual technologies to improve customer service
22 June 2011 | Airports around Europe have recently introduced new virtual technologies such as augmented reality, video-conferencing and holograms, which besides their novelty factor, aim to improve customer service at the airport.
Augmented reality
Copenhagen Airport’s latest version of its ‘CPH iPhone’ application features ‘augmented reality’ technology that can be used as a wayfinder inside the airport terminals. Augmented reality combines a camera, GPS and compass in a smartphone to enable the phone’s camera to recognize an object or place that a user is pointing to. Developed in cooperation with airline technology provicer SITA, Copenhagen Airport’s app lets users ‘scan’ the terminals with their iPhone camera and then shows their distance to shops, restaurants and gates and in which direction they are located.
Because GPS signals cannot penetrate concrete structures, it can’t be used to determine a location inside the terminal buildings, so instead the airport is using its finely meshed Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide positioning accurate down to a few metres.
Copenhagen Airport claims to be the first airport in the world to incorporate augmented reality in its iPhone application, and says it hopes to “make it even easier and more fun for passengers to find their way.” Says the airport’s Head of IT Christian Poulsen, “This is a first version of this new technology and we already have many ideas for further development. However, we are launching it now to get an indication from passengers of whether they agree with us that this could be one of the ways of improving wayfinding at the airport”. The ‘CPH iPhone app’ is available for free from the iTunes app store.
Video conferencing
Also aiming to improve passenger way-finding around the airport are Munich Airport’s new ‘InfoGates’. Passengers can use one of six InfoGates to get connected directly to a ‘real’ information service representative via videoconference for a live conversation on life-sized screens. According to Munich Airport the InfoGates will help passengers get their bearings more quickly and allow them to request individual directions in areas of the airport where there was previously no opportunity for face-to-face contact with airport staff.
Read full article »
Stockholm Arlanda Airport allows ‘eco taxis’ to cut the line
15 June 2011 | Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport last year introduced a simple but effective system to achieve more sustainable taxi services at the airport. To reduce emissions, a dispatch system for taxis was introduced that gives priority to so-called ‘eco taxis’ – vehicles that emit less than 120 gram of CO2 per kilometer – in the airport’s taxi lanes. The fewer emissions a taxi produces, the shorter the waiting time will be for being dispatched to the taxi lane in front of the terminal. Says one taxi driver at the airport: “I save at least one hour a day in this way, as I do not have to stand at the end of the ‘normal’ taxi line.”
CO2 emissions-based dispatch system
According to the airport, the taxi dispatch system is the only one of its kind in the world that automatically gives the shortest waiting times to cars with the lowest environmental impact, such as hybrid, biofuel or flexi-fuel powered vehicles. All taxis that deliver and pick up customers at Stockholm-Arlanda are gathered in a designated remote parking area. To get physical access to this area, and participate in the queue system, a taxi has to be registered at the airport. This provides Arlanda Airport with the opportunity to calculate CO2 emissions based on the vehicle’s registration certificate. In line with the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions model, a 65 percent deduction in emissions is made for cars that run on ethanol and an 85 percent deduction is made for those that run on biogas, as net emissions are lower with green fuel.
To ensure vehicles that run on ‘green’ fuel actually refuel with it, there is a monitoring system that checks to ensure whether the car has at least 80 percent of the fuel indicated. To make things easier for green fuel taxis, Sweden’s biggest biogas filling station also opened at the airport in September 2010. Taxi companies that serve the airport have been replacing their taxis with less CO2 emitting cars, which also has a positive effect on the whole region.
Read full article »
Delta to let passengers rent iPad at the airport for onboard use, return it via mail
13 June 2011 | Delta Air Lines and airport food and beverage operator OTG Management have teamed up to modernize the food and beverage offering at Delta’s Concourse G in Terminal 1 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International (MSP) Airport. As part of the plans, Delta will upgrade its current food and beverages offerings with 12 new local restaurants and several fresh food markets (images here), and similar to Delta’s New York JFK and La Guardia terminals, seating will be equipped with iPads which passengers can use to order their food and beverages to have it delivered to their seat by a server in less then 10 minutes.
OTG Media Bar
Delta and OTG will also introduce the ‘OTG Media Bar’, a virtual newsstand where Delta passengers can rent an Apple iPad, loaded with the content of their choice. At what looks like a traditional magazine stand, except it will be filled with Apple iPads, passengers can flip through the iPads to see what publications, movies, and music they like, download the content of their choice, and then rent the device for their trip. Once the passenger reaches his or her final destination, a pre-paid postage box received at time of rental is used to return the iPad. This concept of returning rented goods via the mail has been popularized in the U.S. by DVD subscription service Netflix in recent years.
Read full article »
Delta to offer local food and rental iPads to take onboard at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport
22 May 2011 | Delta Air Lines and airport restaurateur OTG Management have announced a new concept at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport (MSP) that taps into two major consumer trends: a growing interest in local and healthy food and the popularity of personal digital devices such as the Apple iPad.
Local food and iPads
At its Concourse G terminal at MSP Airport, Delta will upgrade its current food and beverages offerings with 12 new local restaurants and several fresh food markets. Chefs from the ‘Twin Cities’ will work with local farmers and producers to create a sustainable, health-conscious approach to dining. Restaurants will include Custom Burger – which uses regional farm-sourced meats – a Minnesota Beer Hall serving locally produced beers and Cibo Gourmet markets that emphasize local and artisan foods.
Similar to the food ordering concept introduced by Delta and OTG at New York JFK and La Guardia airports in late 2010, passengers at MSP Airport will be able to order their food and drinks at seating areas equipped with iPads located at the gates and have their orders delivered to their seat.
Media Bar
Delta and OTG will also introduce the OTG Media Bar, a virtual newsstand where Delta passengers can rent an Apple iPad, loaded with the content of their choice. The devices will be available at Cibo Gourmet markets located through the terminal and customers can download publications, movies, music and apps to enjoy during their flight. Those with their own iPads will be able to download material as well. Once the passenger reaches his or her final destination, a pre-paid postage box received at time of rental is used to return the iPad. This concept of returning rented goods via the mail has been popularized in the U.S. by DVD subscription service Netflix in recent years.
Read full article »
iPhone app lets travellers pre-order food for quick pick-up before boarding
18 May 2011 | With the demise of complimentary in-flight catering on most domestic flights in the U.S., airlines have been facing increased competition from airport restaurants and take-away kiosks, as food and beverages are often cheaper and more varied on the ground.
HMSHost ‘B4 You Board’
To help travellers get from the airport entrance to the gate without having to worry whether or not there is time to grab a bite to eat along the way (as for example security lines may be longer than expected), airport food and beverage provider HMSHost has launched a mobile app that allows passengers at New York JFK Airport to order and pay for a meal using their iPhone. Their order is then either delivered at the departure gate or passengers can pick it up from a dedicated B4 You Board kiosk within 20 minutes.
As HMSHost puts it: “Think about it, you’re standing in line at JFK waiting to go through security and you’re not sure you’ll have time to pick up dinner before boarding your flight. However, if you have the B4 You Board app, you can order your meal and pick it up on the airside, or you can opt to have it delivered directly to your gate. Problem solved.”
The B4 You Board app can be downloaded free of charge from iTunes and an Android version is coming this summer. The pre-order service is currently being piloted at New York JFK’s (Delta) Terminal 3 from 12 noon to 8pm and HMS Host says it plans to expand the concept to Minneapolis-St. Paul and Sacramento airports by the end of 2011.
Read full article »
Schiphol Airport opens airport park with wooden benches and virtual butterflies
17 May 2011 | After opening an ‘Airport Library’ and a ‘Holland Boulevard’ to give travellers in transit at the airport a taste of Dutch culture, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport has just opened another ‘airport experience’, this time a 200 square meter (2,100 sq ft) ‘Airport Park’.
Relax before the flight
The airport park is located at Schiphol’s D-pier and replaces a former waiting area. With the park Schiphol aims to create an environment where people can stay in a pleasant and green surroundings to relax, eat and drink before they fly. Greenery, both real and fake, sets the tone at the park and travellers can relax under half a dozen artificial trees in various seating areas, ranging from designer furniture to tree-stump seats, wooden picnic benches and circular benches with foilage in the middle. A 130-year-old tree serves as a signpost for the park. There is also an outdoor terrace where passengers can sit at wooden picnic tables with views on the aircrafts parked at the gates.
The feeling of being in a park is also brought alive through what Schiphol calls ‘mixed reality’ technology: images of famous parks all over the world are displayed on the walls, virtual butterflies surround people when they sit on certain places on the park, while ‘soundcapes’ of animals, bicycle bells and playing children add another ‘real’ touch.
Park Café, DIY-charging
Visitors to the park can also enjoy fair trade coffee, fresh juices, hamburgers on organic buns at a Park Café, while various kiosks sell magazines, newspapers, flowers and souvenirs. Food and beverages can be taken outside to the terrace or enjoyed in the park, and – just like in other areas at Schiphol – free WiFi is available for 1 hour.
Read full article »
Delta lets passengers track their checked luggage in real-time
26 April 2011 | Online tracking and tracing of packages shipped via parcel delivery companies such as FedEx and DHL has been possible for years, and has even spread to services like pizza delivery. For example, Domino’s Pizza ‘Pizza Tracker’ lets customers track their pizza from the moment they place the order until it leaves the kichen en route to them. Examples from the airline industry include Yapta, which offers alerts when fares drop for specific flights or hotels, and FlightStats, which notifies passengers on flight delays and cancellations. Says consumer trends agency trendwatching.com: “Tracking and alerting is the new searching, as it saves consumers time, makes it impossible to forget or miss out, and thus ultimately gives them yet another level of control.”
Delta checked bags tracking
In a move to make the baggage process more transparent for customers, Delta Air Lines is now bringing ‘tracking and alerting’ to checked luggage. The airline has just launched a new ‘Track Checked Bags’ service in order to give passengers a sense of confidence that their luggage has made it to the same aircraft. As Delta scans the bag tags during each part of the journey, passengers can track their baggage in real-time as it makes its way through the Delta system. Available for domestic flights, Delta passengers can go online – for example via their smartphone – to track their checked baggage with the bag tag number that they received at the time of baggage check-in.
Furthermore, as Delta has equipped all its 549 mainline domestic aircraft with GoGo’s in-flight Internet – and is currently installing the service on 223 Delta Connection jets as well – passengers may even check up in the air whether their bag has made it on their flight.
Read full article »
San Francisco Airport’s new Terminal 2 goes eco-chic
15 April 2011 | Aiming to be a model of sustainable building and relaxing travel, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) has just opened its renovated Terminal 2 (T2). The USD383 million facility is the new home for Virgin America and American Airlines domestic flights.
Green standards
Built on the footprint of the old terminal from 1954, SFO’s new T2 will become the first LEED Gold-certified airport terminal in the U.S. and re-uses about 90 percent of the materials from the original building, including terrazzo flooring made from recycled glass chips. Other sustainable building techniques include walls of windows that makes most daytime artificial lighting unnecessary and a new ventilation system that requires 20 percent less energy. A stand-alone plumbing system for the toilets is supplied with reclaimed ‘gray’ water from the airport’s treatment plant, reducing water consumption by 40 percent.
Noticeable eco-friendly features for passengers are energy efficient mood lighting in the ticketing area, ‘hydration stations’ to refill water bottles post-security, organic and local food options, and waste recycling and composting bins placed throughout the terminal.
Hydration stations
As regulations prohibit taking bottled water through security, San Francisco’s T2 encourages passengers to empty their plastic containers before entering the screening area. After passing through the checkpoint, passengers can stop at so-called ‘hydration stations’ to refill their water bottles for free. SFO hopes the hydration stations will encourage passengers to reduce waste and in February 2011 also installled a similar facility at its Terminal 3. For those that want to purchase bottled water post-security, vendors at T2 are only allowed to sell water in compostable bottles.
Read full article »
Austrian Airlines starts its own branded airport taxi service
9 April 2011 | In an effort to manage more parts of the passenger journey and capture much needed ancillary revenues in the process, airlines are increasingly cross-selling services such as hotel reservations, car rental bookings and travel insurance to passengers. Austrian Airlines is taking this approach a step further and recently has launched its own branded taxi service in Vienna.
Austrian red|cab
Available for Austrian passengers only, the Austrian red|cab service, which currently consists of eight vehicles sporting the Austrian name and logo, transfers Austrian passengers between Vienna (and surroundings) and Vienna Airport. Inside the taxis passenger find a free daily newspaper, Austrian’s in-flight magazines Skylines and Succeed and a bottle of mineral water. The red|cab taxis can only be booked online up to 24 hours before departure and payment is by credit card. The service starts at 29 euros each way for a private car for up to three people, while those opting for a minibus for up to eight people pay 40 euros each way.
Austrian promotes the red|cab service on its website, in the booking confirmation e-mail, as well as in its in-flight magazines and entertainment program. The taxis are operated by AirportServices Wien, and the red|cab service is part of a portfolio of ancillary products by Austrian, called red|services, which are mostly business class services made available to passengers in Economy for a fee.
Read full article »
World’s first Skype video booth launches at Estonia’s Tallinn Airport
5 April 2011 | Launched by three Estonian software developers in 2003, Skype allows users to make voice calls over the Internet free of charge. At the end of 2010 the popular service had over 660 million registered users worldwide. To showcase Estonia’s (one of the three Baltic states) high-tech capabilities, the world’s first Skype ‘video telephony booth’ was recently unveiled at Tallinn Airport in Estonia, enabling travellers to make free worldwide video calls to other Skype users.
The Skype video booth is a collaboration between Enterprise Estonia, which promotes Estonian companies abroad and Estonian ad agencies AdTech and Brilliant. Says Enterprise Estonia communications coordinator Merilin Pärli, “Skype was an idea that was developed in Estonia, and the company still has a development unit in Tallinn, so it was quite logical that the initial home of Skype would have a Skype station at Tallinn airport – as one Skype station says more than 1,000 words about Estonia.”
The Skype video booth can be used by anybody who has a Skype account and those who have purchased Skype credit can also call regular telephone numbers. When a user steps on the floor of the station, the color of the futuristic-looking booth changes from blue to green signalling that he or she can log on. Inside the booth is a 22-inch touchscreen and a headset (alternatively, users can connect their own headseat as well), and after logging in, users can dial their friends and family. If the receiving end also has got a camera installed, then the service works just like an ordinary video call. To log off all one has to do is to step out of the booth.
With the first Skype video booth now in place, AdTech, who designed the booth, says it wants to bring the service to other airports, hotels, cruise ships, hospitals and shopping malls around the world, extending Skype’s service beyond computers and mobile phones to dedicated physical devices. The cost of a video booth is reportedly around 4,000 euros (USD5,600) and AdTech is also working on several new prototypes.
Read full article »
Airport perfumes and t-shirts let consumers tell a story
We have been covering the concept of ‘storytelling’ several times before on airlinetrends.com (short recap: In our million channel world, it is the brands who tell the best stories (or even better: the brands that let consumers tell the best stories), that win. Or as trendwatching.com puts it in their ‘Status Stories’ brief: “Expect a shift from brands telling a story, to brands helping consumers tell status-yielding stories to other consumers. What can be better for consumers hoping to tell peers an (impressive) story than to be asked for one?”
The airline industry has always captured people’s imagination, with the jet-setting lifestyle providing a popular ‘conversation starter’. Now, a new perfume concept and a company that sells customized t-shirts are capitalizing on the storytelling trend.
The Scent of Departure
The Scent of Departure is a new fragrance concept designed to capture the essence and spirit of cities. Each fragrance has been inspired by and created exclusively for a specific city, and comes in bottles labelled with a luggage tag with the three-letter symbol of the airports that serve them. To further add to the story, each fragrance will only be available at the duty free shops within the international airport it is named for.
The collection starts with Munich / MUC, Vienna / VIE, Istanbul / IST, Budapest / BUD, and Frankfurt / FRA. In a nice twist, consumers can participate in the design and creation of future destination scents by filling out an online form asking them about the city they see for the collection, the perfume notes they think ought to be included and the image to put on the flacon.
Scent souvenir
Developed by Paris-based perfume brand Histoires de Parfums, The Scent of Departure aims to let travellers bring home a scent souvenir from their trips abroad. In the company’s words: “The sense of smell is such a strong device for recollection that every city should have its own scent, which traveller can take with them to remembers their travels by.“ […] “A unique amalgam of rich raw materials reminiscent of a great city’s energy and personality, each Scent of Departure fragrance is offered a keepsake, a scent souvenir for a traveler to keep or give as a gift.” Read full article »
Taipei International Airport opens e-library for transit passengers
16 March 2011 | Taipei’s main airport, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, has opened what it is calling the world’s first in-transit ‘e-library waiting lounge’. Passengers waiting for flights can browse through a selection of 400 English and Chinese-language e-books featuring a wide range of genres, as well as 2,000 regular books and dozens of newspapers and magazines. The e-library aims to give passengers a new option while waiting to board flights and is located adjacent to gate C5 in the airport’s Terminal 2, which commonly handles stopovers between North America and Southeast Asia.
The e-books are stored on around 30 devices, a mix of iPads and other e-readers, which are loaned out on a first-come first-served basis. However, passengers can’t download the books to their own e-reader, which somewhat limits the usefulness of the service. Besides the available electronic and printed content, passengers can make use of free Wi-Fi and charge their cell phones at any of 42 the molded-plastic seats which have integrated power outlets and pullout tables. In addition, the room is equipped with GPS navigation systems for travellers interested in searching for maps of their destinations, and also features a photo station where passengers can take self-portraits and send them to family or friends by e-mail. More pictures of the e-library here and here.
The 198sq m (2,131sq ft) e-library, which was proposed by Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, is a collaborative effort between the Ever Rich Duty Free Shop and the government-funded Institute for Information Industry. An Ever Rich spokesperson told DFNIonline that, “Since EverRich Duty Free is dedicated to promoting Taiwanese culture, it came up with the idea of integrating the library concept with the technology industry which is the pride of Taiwan.” As a tribute to Taiwan’s high tech pedigree, the e-Library’s facade is designed from an amalgamation of circuit boards. According to DFNIonline, a further two e-libraries have been built in the airport’s T1 north wing (area A) and south wing (area B) along with one at Kaohsiung International airport.
Read full article »
