Hamad International Airport (HIA) has launched the second phase of its innovative Smart Airport program which sets to initiate an exciting major digital transformation of the passenger journey through facial biometric recognition across all key passenger touch points.
The system, currently under trial, is a central piece of the airports digital strategy and combines passengers’ flight, passport, and facial biometric information in a single electronic record at the self-check-in kiosk or mobile app. Subsequently, only the passenger’s face is required for verification at the self-service bag-drop, automated security gate, and the automated boarding gate, making the experience fast and seamless. Knowledge of exactly where the passengers are in their journey at the airport will also aim to help further improve the renowned on-time at HIA.
The successful completion of the first major phase of HIA’s Smart Airport program has proven to be extremely popular, with up to 40% of the home carrier Qatar Airways’ passengers preferring to self-check-in; and a further 20% opting for self-bag-drop. The swift process vastly improves customer experience and allows more passengers to be managed without physical expansion of the check-in facilities. It also empowers HIA passengers by offering total control of their journey from arrival to departure.
HIA’s Smart Airport program is helping optimize operational processes; and utilization of resources and assets at the airport, for instance, the Service Delivery Measurement system enables real-time monitoring of passenger wait times, thus allowing tactical decisions to recover service levels by deploying additional resources when the wait time exceeds targets. The performance trends also help inform design decisions for future terminal capacity and passenger flows, a benefit to HIA as it begins the next phase of its expansion plan this year. Another example is the airports ongoing implementation of Airport Collaborative Decision Making (ACDM) platform. Once fully operational, this platform will enable more effective collaboration between all airport stakeholders to optimize flight turn around processes, further improving HIA’s efficiency and on-time performance.
Source: Hamad International Airport