Alaska Airlines will remove its traditional airport kiosks as part of a broader tech overhaul in cities including Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, aiming to get passengers through the airport lobby in 5 minutes or less.
The Seattle-based airline says it will use iPads for self-serve stations where passengers can scan their boarding passes to quickly print out bag tags, rather than manually entering a confirmation code or other information.
In addition, Alaska plans to transition to automated bag drops that use facial recognition to identify passengers, streamlining the bag-drop process and no longer requiring each station to be staffed by Alaska agents.
The tech overhaul is part of a larger $2.5 billion, 3-year plan to remodel and upgrade Alaska’s airport lobbies, starting at its major West Coast hubs, and eventually reaching additional airports including San Jose and San Diego.
In the Seattle area, Alaska says its Sea-Tac Airport lobby will undergo a major renovation, operating completely differently when finished two years from now.
Alaska claims the distinction of being the first airline to introduce self-serve kiosks 25 years ago, in 2007, and says it now plans to be the first to remove them in favor of more modern technology.
The plan reflects several key trends in air travel, the economy, and technology:
Increased smartphone usage: The new system embraces and encourages the trend of passengers checking in and choosing seats before arriving at the airport, and using mobile boarding passes on their smartphones.
Currently, about 70% of passengers check in beforehand. Alaska wants to get that close to 100%.
“We are working to make sure that everybody’s travel-ready before they get to the airport,” said Charu Jain, Alaska’s senior vice president of merchandising and innovation, in an interview with GeekWire. “It’s really about that peace of mind to say, ‘I have my boarding pass, which means I can sail through the airport.’ “
A major goal is to reduce anxiety about getting to a flight on time, by making the process more predictable, she said.
Biometric identification: The use of facial recognition for automated bag drops will test the willingness of Alaska’s passengers to shift to biometric identification, and to trust the airline to protect the privacy of their personal data.
This is part of a broader trend in the industry. Airlines have increasingly been adopting facial recognition technology to confirm the identity of passengers. Alaska is already using biometrics for identification on international flights.
Even after the installation of the new Alaska bag drops, passengers who choose not to have their faces scanned will be able to present a traditional form of identification to an agent when dropping off their checked luggage, Jain said.
But ultimately, Alaska plans to make biometrics even more integral to flying.
Biometrics are “big part of the strategy for the seamless experience,” Jain said, describing the airline’s long-term vision. “Your face actually becomes your ID and your boarding pass at the end of the day.”
Automation and the labor market: Increased use of automation and self-serve technologies could help Alaska and other airlines adapt to the new realities of the labor market.
Labor shortages have been changing the conversation about automation in many industries. Whereas before the questions centered on technology taking jobs, now the focus is increasingly on technology making workers more efficient, freeing them up for higher-level tasks, and helping to fill gaps in the market.
The latest annual report from Alaska Air Group, the airline’s publicly traded parent company, cites ongoing labor shortages in many positions, including customer service reps, as a major risk factor facing its business.
In each scenario in the new Alaska lobbies, passengers who choose not to use the new technology will be able to work with an agent instead, to print a bag tag or get a boarding pass, for example. But agents will focus more on troubleshooting issues, and helping passengers who need assistance, rather than basic tasks.
There will also be options for passengers who don’t have a smartphone or want to use one for a boarding pass. For example, the iPad-based bag tag stations will also scan the barcodes on paper boarding passes.
The overall changes could cut the time it takes to get through the lobby by as much as half, if Alaska can reach its goal of reducing the process to 5 minutes or less. It now takes between 8 and 10 minutes, on average, Jain said.
Alaska also plans to expand the availability of electronic bag tags that use a combination of Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Bluetooth Low Energy technology to transfer information from a passenger’s smartphone to E-Ink displays on dedicated bag tags. They’re currently being tested by about 2,500 of its elite Mileage Plan members. (See this previous GeekWire story for more.)
This raises another question: Why not use NFC at the new iPad bag-tag stations to streamline the process even further, letting passengers connect their phones wirelessly rather than scanning their boarding passes?
Jain said Alaska is already thinking about this, but it will require Apple to make NFC available on the iPad. “They won’t tell me if it’s on the roadmap,” she said, “but I think it’ll come at some point in time.”
