Dubai International, the world’s number one airport for international travellers for the past five years, has 128 Smart Gates which helped millions of passengers clear border control formalities within a record span of six to nine seconds on an average, an official told a conference in Dubai.
In her presentation at the Global Airport Leaders Forum (GALF), Radwa Hozien, Chief Software Officer at emaratech, a technology and management consulting company of the Investment Corporation Dubai (ICD), said DXB last year handled an average of 120,000 passengers daily during peak times.
The processing time for immigration formalities per passenger took just a few seconds.
According to the IATA, 80% of the global passengers will be offered with a complete and relevant self-service suite throughout their journeys even as iris biometric becomes more and more accurate, she said.
Ms Hozein added that Next-Gen technology has been helping process the entry and exit of passengers amazingly faster than ever before.
DXB and DWC ‘Good to Go’ for Runway Closure
Technology, she explained, has been helping the airport and other authorities to know the passenger much before he/she arrives at the airport for their journeys.
On another important issue, in his keynote address, Abdulqader Ali, CEO of Smartworld, the telecom provider for Dubai South and Managed Services provider for UAE government entities, said there will be 30 million Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) by 2021.
This poses a serious challenge to the functioning of airports across the world.
The scenario has been undergoing a paradigm shift from 2D to 3D, requiring new technologies to stop UAS posing challenges and threats and controlling them effectively.
In his address, Dieter Heinz, Honorary President of German Airport Technology and Equipment (GATE), highlighted the major milestones of airport technology which the Dubai had used it extensively to improvise the performance and efficiencies of its airports much to everyone’s delight.
He praised the authorities for continuing their proactive approach and being a good model for airport management.
In another panel discussion on ‘Privatisation leading to Smart Airports’, another group of experts referred to the bottlenecks and hurdles coming in the way towards airport privatisation.
Javed Malik, Group COO, AirAsia, Stefan Ruter, CFO, Oman Airports, Keven Riordan, Head of Airport and Checkpoint Solutions, Smiths Detection and Brian Kaasner Krishtiansen, Managing Director of Epinion Global, participated. Dr. Fethi Chebil, an aviation advisor, moderated.
The panellists suggested optimizing the assets by benefiting from the different streams of revenues available at the airports.
Read More: 63% of DXB Passengers in Transit During 2018