Passengers without bags will be able to bypass check-in desks and kiosks and proceed directly to immigration.
Within a few years, passengers could have their hands freed of cumbersome passports and tickets, with airports and airlines in Asia speeding up their adoption of biometrics technologies.
At Brisbane Airport, Qantas has partnered with SITA to trial facial recognition technology for both self check-in and replacing passport and boarding pass screenings. The three-month trial, which began last November, will enable passengers to use their mobile device as a passport and boarding pass through a mobile application.
Passengers without bags will be able to bypass check-in desks and kiosks and proceed directly to immigration.
According to a report by SITA, roughly three quarters of airports and airlines have already implemented, or are planning to implement, a biometrics solution within the next three years.
Beyond passenger-facing technologies, another major development gathering pace is predictive analytics solutions, which are extending the forecast of flight arrivals from the standard 30-60 minutes before arrival to six hours that will enable greater efficiencies and allocation from gateway services to immigration.
According to SITA president Asia Pacific, Sumesh Patel, Changi Airport has achieved the six-hour visibility for 80% of incoming flights.
Other top emerging technologies that the report identifies include the use of virtual agents and chatbots, targeted advertising and personalisation, customer feedback and social media, pattern recognition and automatic scheduling.
But the drive towards new technologies is alarming given an increasing spate of several major data breaches in recent years, from Cathay Pacific to British Airways and Singapore Airlines.
To this end, airlines and airports have been increasing their cybersecurity spend year-on-year, with the amount reaching US$3.9 billion in 2018, according to SITA’s 2018 Air Transport Cybersecurity Insights report.
Airports have increased their cybersecurity spend from 10% to 12% from 2017 to 2018, while airlines have similarly forked out 9% of their overall IT budget on cybersecurity. Over the next few years, SITA estimates that 92% of airports and airlines will have a cybersecurity system in place.
When asked how prepared airports and airlines in Asia Pacific are for a potential cyber attack, Patel estimates the current level for most stands at 50%.
Airports and airlines will also be able to be part of a cybersecurity information-sharing platform as part of a partnership between SITA and plane manufacturer Airbus. Information on new security incidents will be shared with airlines, airports and other air transport industry stakeholders.