BUSINESS INOVATE

Electronic tickets, who has not used them yet? You receive an e-mail from your airline company, with the reservation code you enter the Airline site, select a seat, print the boarding pass and you are finished. But not a lot of people “users” use it this way. This is a problem for the airliners who have recently invested in a new and innovative infrastructure. The extra and additional costs for the infrastructure needs to be recovered soon.

Besides the facility in which you can print a ticket at the office or at home, there are new devices needed with which customers can check-in without the support of an agent. On the airport you will find these automatic ticket printing devices where you can help yourself printing a boarding pass.

The construction of a new building is often a trigger for introducing the latest technology. Hospitals are doing this, but airports are no exception. In this way the knife cuts on two sides; the new building serves as a vehicle to carry a new innovation. A new infrastructure on itself is never an accepted goal to invest in, but when the capacity (of hospitals or airports) needs to be expanded anyhow, the upgrade of an infrastructure is easy to justify -- the extra cost is limited.

And that's how it is done in Madrid. The new terminal in Madrid (T4) has been assigned nearly fully to the Airliner Iberia. And that is no coincidence. By doing this Iberia could renew it 's airport infrastructure and compete better with the new budget airlines.

The new terminal is loaded with automatic boarding machines -- the airline variant of the banking ATM. But now the challenge is; "how do we have passenger use them?"

Well that change is easily facilitated too. You notice this when you arrive at the airport. There are only a very limited number of normal (traditional) check-in points operated by agents, for which large queues are formed.

This queue is deliberately "designed" to route people to the new automatic devices. The choice to wait in a queue for nearly one hour or -- alternatively -- to try the self-service check-in machines is not a hard decision.

There are situations where this automatic boarding is not functioning, for example when your flight is delayed or when other problems occur. But these are exception that airlines have to deal with anyway.

The trend is set. Soon this new infrastructure will be the new standard.