The Drive to Self-Handling

When Catherine Mayer found herself waiting in an airline customer service line to find out why her luggage didn't show up after an international flight in early April, she knew there had to be better way. In fact, she knew exactly what that way should be. Mayer is VP-airport services for SITA, which is at the forefront of an industrywide push to accelerate passenger self-service options.

"Give control to the passenger," says Mayer. "If the passenger wants to vent, give them a person to vent to." Her toolkit includes Internet and kiosk technologies designed to bring self-service to the departure side of the travel experience and to a lesser extent to the arrival side. "Companies are just getting their arms around the departure side," she observes.

For airlines, the combination of e-tickets, Internet and kiosk-based self-service check-in has been a jackpot. For example, e-tickets cost around $1 to process versus $10 for paper ones, according to IATA. The association reported that one "major European airline" slashed its expenses by nearly $200 million a year after investing $75 million in automated Web check-in and cutting back its call center staffing in several European countries.

Add to that the savings generated by passenger self-service check-in and the impetus from a cost standpoint becomes more obvious. Traditional in-person airport check-in costs about $3.62 per transaction while using a self-service kiosk reduces that to 52 cents; surfing the Internet to check in and print boarding cards before arriving at the airport cuts the transaction cost to 16 cents, according to SITA.

British Airways is banking on the synergies: When the carrier opens its new consolidated Terminal 5 at London Heathrow in 2008, self-service systems will outnumber people-managed systems, says John Lampl, spokesperson for the Americas. The layout of the terminal itself was created to speed up the departure side of the travel experience, optimizing movement between kiosks and bag drop areas, which will use "lifts" rather than traditional conveyor belts behind the check-in counters. SITA is providing the kiosks while BA is developing the software. The airline already is beginning to make the transition, having implemented across-the-board self-service check-in for customers traveling on intra-UK flights from April 25.

BA currently has online check-in for all of its gateways and as a result was able to close its call center in Toronto. It will shutter its call centers in the Caribbean and Belfast as more people begin using the online services. "The biggest problem is when people change reservations," Lampl says. "That can't be done online. You have to call and a real person has to make those changes." BA "prefers" that people use its automated equipment but that is not mandated, he adds.

Polar Opposite

With all of its BA-owned equipment, T5 is somewhat the polar opposite of the trend elsewhere toward common-use self-service. With CUSS, an airport or ground handler purchases and installs the Web infrastructure and kiosks to allow for self-service check-in, while airlines develop their own software applications. Some providers offer the service free, others charge a fee.

In early April, ground handler Swissport International rolled out at New York JFK Terminal 4 its branded CUSS check-in kiosks, a product it offers in partnership with SITA. "What's really exciting with Swissport is that ground handlers are kind of threatened by self-service," says Alex Rickards, SITA's point man for global relationships with Swissport. For SITA, the year-old partnership provided a means for potentially gaining a presence in the handler's vast ground network of 170 airports in 40 countries.

For smaller airlines, Rickards says CUSS means the cost of buying into self-service can be lower because the carrier pays only a portion of the overall cost in addition to providing its own application software.
Swissport's CUSS also is installed at Basel Airport. At JFK, Swissport reported that 40% of e-ticketed passengers used the devices in the first few days of operation, "an exceptionally high acceptance rate." The SITA-provided kiosks and applications are designed to handle a maximum of 60 airlines though the system currently is programmed for 12, says Rickards.

ARINC has a similar CUSS offering, primarily in partnership with kiosk-maker IBM. The company in March announced an installation of its iMUSE system at Portland International; two of the airport's international carriers had been using the equipment for self-service check-in.

John Dungan, director-global product management for ARINC, says its product is installed at 13 sites, including some 200 kiosks at Las Vegas McCarran International, and business is "steadily growing." He notes that smaller airports are interested in CUSS as a space-saver. Westchester County Airport in New York purchased ARINC's CUSS to reduce the number of kiosks from eight to four. For airlines, shared resources can help at non-hub facilities. Common-use equipment "makes a lot of sense for carriers with a lot of spoke airports, where justifying [the costs of] self-service may be difficult," Dungan states.

The increasing dependence on self-service has made kiosks a critical player in the airport environment. "Kiosks are an absolute necessity to de-peaking," says James Burke, VP-IT and telecommunications for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority. "Major airlines are looking at a lot of extra systems going in." Toronto has CUSS kiosks from SITA in addition to SITA-managed services to maintain the units. The airport will be adding about 100 new units to its refurbished terminals over the next year.

Theresa Heinz, VP-business development for NCR subsidiary Kinetics, a manufacturer of kiosks and self-service technologies, explains that the devices have evolved from "appliances with magnetic card printers" 12 years ago to highly capable tools today. They can offer international check-in, passenger reaccommodation and the ability for airlines to sell seating upgrades and collect baggage fees. SITA reports that one European carrier gained a 1.5% increase in revenue over the period of a few months by offering ticket upgrades on the kiosks.

Kinetics provides Web-based hardware and software check-in applications for US Major airlines including Delta Air Lines, Continental Airlines and Northwest Airlines, and to a lesser extent for carriers in Canada, Central America and Australia. The company recently added passport readers to 1,000 kiosks for Delta at four US airports, allowing for self-service international check-in. All of Delta's US kiosks will be equipped with readers by year end.
Its self-service check-ins for domestic flights increased 10% last year, with 28 million passengers using kiosks to obtain boarding passes.

Kinetics President Herve Muller says the company has 5,600 kiosks deployed in the US and will have 6,000 in place by year end. "As that [number] grows, we also see self-service growing outside of the airport," he adds. Kinetics has a pilot program in place at "major hotel chains" employing hospitality kiosks that can be used for hotel check-in and checkout as well as airline check-in.

Tail Art

Frontier Airlines selected Kinetics as its kiosk and application provider to expand its self-service offerings from meager beginnings at Denver International. According to spokesperson Joe Hodas, Frontier has been testing eight self-service kiosks for two years and will be expanding the airline-owned assets at DEN "significantly" in June, followed by a rollout at "busier stations around the country." In addition to the typical kiosk functions like seat selection and number of bags to check, Frontier's system will show the flight's tail art, tying into the carrier's branding programeach aircraft has a different animal decorating its vertical stabilizer. Hodas says counter staffing will not change, with agents splitting duty between counters and kiosks.

At Alaska Airlines, according to SITA, average check-in time dropped from 20 min. per person to 5 min. after self-service kiosks were installed in 2001. After incorporating self-service bag drops more recently, check-in time dropped to under 2 min. Though SITA previously built its own kiosk devices, the company last year signed an agreement with Colorado-based Kiosk Information Systems to supply its systems.

Some airlines are turning to kiosks to handle their scheduling anomalies. Heinz says some Majors have purchased tracking systems that "watch the traffic situation" during a flight and rebook passengers if a disruption occurs. On landing, kiosks are used to obtain new boarding passes or change flights. She says the equipment also gives the airline a chance for additional customer service through amenity coupons. She estimates that 35%-40% of Kinetics kiosks at this point have the functionality.

Dungan says some carriers are experimenting with mobile kiosks that can be placed on a cart and rolled out so that passengers can handle rebooking themselves. Mayer says certain airlines, including American, have added VOiP phones to their dedicated kiosks so passengers can call for assistance.

The reliance on the machines is making reliability all the more crucial. "Kiosks have become mission critical," says Muller. "A robust design is needed, with remote monitoring, software distribution and help desks, and you have to have the ability to fix them quickly." Kinetics offers aftermarket support on a systemwide basis but he declines to disclose its customers.

Kiosk Information Systems Executive Manager Craig Keefner notes that seemingly insignificant items can impact kiosk reliability and aftermarket cost: Increasing the size of the paper roll for the printer can mean sending a technician out every 32 days instead of every 24, for example. "That's a lot of service calls saved per year."

For CUSS devices, first-generation software sometimes has been problematic. Dungan says varied interpretations of the CUSS standards developed by IATA have led to costly issues where different airlines' software applications won't interface correctly with hardware devices like printers. Though the issues are worked out in testing before the machines go live, he says the process can be costly and time-consuming.

Along with perfecting today's systems, service providers are experimenting with the next generation. Mayer says current departure-side self-service developments are "just the tip of the iceberg." SITA has been piloting for two years a program through which passengers can use mobile phones to check in. By calling an airline's automated system, the traveler receives a text message barcode encrypted with check-in information and scans the phone at a kiosk equipped with a barcode reader. The same process can be used at the security checkpoint and the gate. Although Lufthansa was the first carrier to test the system, followed by Air Canada and Singapore Airlines, no one has signed up. "It's not really a cost issue," says Mayer, "it's more of making sure passengers are ready for it."

For Mayer, having the ability to do automated baggage reconciliation is an empowerment too long in coming. Though the airline on which she was traveling was one of the 98% of carriers that use a tracking and tracing database developed by SITA, she had to wait in line to have an airline employee enter the same information into an online database that she could have provided with her cellphone. "It's not rocket science," she says.