For many people, airports are just a stop they have to make — often with some reluctance. However, airports across the globe are increasingly leveraging the latest innovations to make sure that travellers have a more seamless and stress-free experience before they board and after they disembark from their planes.
Incheon Airport in South Korea is on such a mission, and the service doesn’t just begin at the terminals, but at passengers’ own homes. Coming off the Inter Airport South East Asia (IASEA) exhibition and conference in Singapore, Soonil Hwang, Deputy Director of Incheon International Airport Corporation’s Fast Travel Team, spoke with Frontier Enterprise to discuss details of recent airport improvements.
Home service
Quite often, the hassle of hauling heavy luggage to the airport already sets passengers up for a laborious journey. This is doubly taxing for solo passengers with numerous bags.
At Incheon Airport, the concept of “hands-free travel” exists to bring comfort to passengers. This allows passengers to travel without carrying any luggage from their homes to the airport or throughout their entire journey to the next destination.
“When using this service, agents will visit the passenger’s home or hotel to issue the boarding pass and baggage tag, and then deliver the luggage to the final destination — either the baggage carousel at the arrival airport or the hotel at the destination,” Hwang said.
For this service, Incheon Airport developed a portable check-in device based on the Common Use Passenger Processing System (CUPPS) global standard, allowing agents to complete the check-in process right in front of the passenger’s home or hotel room.
Secure convenience
Coming off the COVID-19 pandemic, Seoul’s Incheon Airport had to deal with a surge in travel. Chief among its challenges was the lack of personnel to handle security checks and passport control processes.
To address this concern, the airport deployed the Smart Pass — an automated biometrics-based border control system. According to Hwang, this significantly reduced congestion at their terminals.
“The Smart Pass Project is designed to streamline the departure process at Incheon Airport through facial recognition (biometrics), allowing passengers to move through check-in, the departure gate, immigration, and boarding using facial verification. Once passengers register their passport details, facial data, and boarding pass information via the Smart Pass app, they can proceed through each checkpoint simply by presenting their face at the kiosk,” he explained.
Since data collection is involved, Hwang said the Smart Pass system stores only the interest points (i.e., specific facial features used for recognition) extracted from facial images and passport information, with passengers’ consent.
“After passengers check in via the airline’s platform and voluntarily register their boarding information with Smart Pass, the system automatically matches their biometric data with boarding information to enable access at checkpoints. This also means that no personal information is shared with any third parties, including airlines, without the consent of the passenger,” he said.
Eyes ahead
Like its peers, Incheon Airport has also set its sights on AI. According to Hwang, they are applying AI to the information desks within the terminal.
“An AI will be stationed at these information desks instead of human staff to provide the relevant information to passengers in need,” he shared.
Likewise, the airport will also start using generative AI this year to help simplify workflows for employees and reduce the time required to complete tasks, which will enhance overall operational efficiency.
“Moreover, we aim to integrate the currently fragmented services across airports in South Korea, so passengers can experience seamless, hands-free travel using One ID, which is based on biometric identification. Achieving this will require close collaboration with other airports, as well as with key stakeholders such as airlines and service providers,” Hwang added.
In addition to AI, Incheon Airport will also increasingly leverage IoT, digital twins, parking and janitorial robots, autonomous driving shuttles, and urban air mobility across the terminals and runways, he revealed.
Since immigration ranks among the most frequently criticised airport procedures, including at Incheon, Hwang said they are also working on shortening processing times in the near future using advanced technology.
