Portable Passenger Processing In Airports

Airports are complex environments that include lots of different devices and processes. One of which is the boarding process. For a passenger to board an aircraft, their boarding pass which can be a paper ticket printed at home, an airport printed boarding card, or a barcode on a phone has to be scanned. On the ticket is a barcode that contains the information that is needed by the airports systems to identify the passenger and validate that they are permitted to board the aircraft. A lot of passenger processing in the airports involves processing this barcode.

The device used to scan the barcode can either be a simple barcode scanner, or a boarding gate reader (BGR). BGR’s are usually positioned on pedestals, or the gate desks themselves. Agents (people that handle boarding operations for the airline) will take the passengers boarding pass and scan it on the BGR. Once a message is displayed to the agent that the passenger is good to board, then they will be allowed to go past and the agent will scan the next passengers boarding pass.

What if… Instead of the boarding gates being fixed to the pedestal or the agent’s desk. That they become portable. Allowing the agents the flexibility to easily board passengers while they are queued up. Even offering a personal service to some who cannot walk.

What if… The agent has the ability to walk down the line checking the passenger’s documents? Or if a passenger asks for help, the agent can check the passenger’s documents by scanning the barcode on their boarding pass.

What if… The airline wants to offer a personal service to their business and first class passenger’s by allowing them to scan a barcode and board the aircraft from the VIP lounge.

What if… The airport wants to be able to help passengers by scanning their boarding passes and being able to determine what gate the passenger should be at from the flight information that is on the boarding pass.

Imagine an airport where the flexibility and portability of using a mobile device that is locked down so that only the airports preferred application can run. Imagine loading a barcode reader on this device. Imagine what would happen if this device could run an application that will either query the airports system allowing the agent to assist the passenger or even board them on the aircraft.

Portable devices are becoming much cheaper and more powerful. For this example, I am talking about Android devices. I am sure that similar features could be implemented with IOS and Windows devices, but for this example I am focusing on Android because they are so easily available, cheap and a custom version of the operating system can be made with relative ease. Google Glass doesn’t fall into ease of customisation, but can be included in this example because of the flexibility that it offers to the airport systems.

Snapshot taken of a Samsung Note 2 running sample passenger processing code. (07/07/2013).

For this example, create an application that can read and decode barcodes. This functionality can be built into the application, or can be a separate application like ZXing (ZXing 2014 [Online]. Available at https://github.com/zxing/zxing [Accessed 06/07/2014]). These barcodes have a particular predefined format that gives the airport the ability to process passenger information and query airport systems. This application will need to be able to connect directly to the airport/airlines systems either through Wi-Fi for maybe even Bluetooth on a local boarding computer.

Snapshot taken on a Samsung Note 2. This is what the user sees when a barcode has been scanned.  (07/07/2013).

To assist a passenger, the passenger’s name and flight information can be extracted from the barcode allowing the airports systems to be queried for information about the passenger and the flight. With this information the agent will have the ability to direct the passenger to where they need to be.

To board a passenger, the application can either connect directly to the airports host system and act as a standard boarding gate reader (BGR) or connect to the hosts system directly using whatever method is available to allow the application to process the passenger’s information and board the passenger. By simulating a standard BGR, the application will be able to operate without changes needing to be made to the airlines application. Minimising changes to the airlines systems will make it easier for the airport to implement.

Graphic created to train the user when the application is launched. (07/07/2013).

Some airports are constantly redeveloping their terminals so that they can force the passengers to go through the shops. The terminals are getting better with more integrated security and passenger processing systems. As you can see, there are multiple ways in which a simple application will be able to improve not only the boarding process, but also the passenger experience. What it requires is innovation and vision. As I passenger I would like to see systems implemented that make airports more flexible in boarding and assisting passengers. Hopefully this type of application will be implemented on one of the flights that I take.