Beijing Capital International Airport transformed into a smart airport
With the use of biometrics and contactless technology, Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) has made strides in building a smart airport to improve control measures during the Covid-19 pandemic.
CAPE TOWN, May 25 (ANA) – With the use of biometrics and contactless technology, Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) has made strides in building a smart airport to improve control measures during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to China Global Television Network (CGTN), the Beijing Capital International Airport is the busiest one in China and the second busiest airport in the world.
Their investment into digitisation and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) has helped them better connect their services with their passengers’ needs and allows them to pass through the airport in a touchless experience.
Biometric checkpoints, automatic gates, self bag drop stations, are some of the infrastructure used which not only improves processing efficiency, but also shortens queuing time and creates physical distancing among their passengers.
“We’ve applied image recognition technology to more accurately grasp the number of passengers entering and leaving the terminal,” General Manager of Information Science & Technology at the Beijing Capital International Airport, Wang Hanlin, told CGTN on Tuesday.
“We’ve also implemented facial recognition to identify suspected cases more quickly and accurately to enable us to have a faster response during the pandemic,” he said.
Wang added that their idea of a “smart airport” means to transform and digitise the airports’ infrastructure so that more of our offline services can be transferred online.
Their digitalisation process did not come overnight, in the past two years they’ve built five capability platforms such as cloud platform, big data, internet of things, geographic information and network security. This formed their digital base which allowed them to consolidate the technology for a smart airport.
Technology provider, SITA, said in a press statement last year that the automated touchless passenger journey includes check-in and bag drop, through to immigration, security and final boarding.
“SITA Smart Path has already proven that it can significantly speed up passenger processing at BCIA, processing over 400 passengers boarding an Airbus A380 in less than 20 minutes,” read the statement.
“Beyond passenger processing, SITA Smart Path also enables hands-free and touchless Duty-Free payment, removing the need to retrieve and show a boarding pass at check out,” it said.
– African News Agency (ANA); Edited by Naomi Mackay