Happy Flow Sets Digital Airport Era

Lisbon, Portugal, March 09, 2016 --(PR.com)-- The air transportation market is booming. IATA (International Air Transport Association) has recently announced that global passenger traffic has risen 6.5% in 2015 compared to 2014, well above the average annual growth rate of 5.5% in the past 10 years. There’s an urgent need to rethink airport capacity and flow management in creative and disruptive ways, improving passenger experience and making airports enjoyable, more profitable and further competitive. The way to do it is Digital, affirms Vision-Box. And they are proving why at Passenger Terminal Expo, the most expected aviation tradeshow for 2016 taking place this March in Cologne.

Vision-Box has been on the edge of passenger experience innovation, even more since the inauguration of Aruba Happy Flow, the game-changing 100% self-service passenger flow based on biometrics at the Aruba Queen Beatrix International Airport last year. This unique multi-stakeholder passenger-centric framework has put in place, for the first time ever, a streamlined, paperless journey from check-in to departure and beyond, using facial biometrics as a single token. The results were a drastic decrease in passenger waiting times, improved operations, and an unparalleled collaboration between airlines, airport and border control authorities.

Passenger Terminal Expo will be the stage for Vision-Box to unveil what is behind this sequence of passenger-centric touch-points that enables such an outstanding end-to-end passenger journey: an innovative, user-centric and comprehensive common-use based orchestration platform for airports, airlines and governments’ managed services, integrating real-time passenger flow management, the necessary security and privacy infrastructure coupled with actionable intelligence through unmatched data analytics capability, which is constantly unveiling new business opportunities.

Miguel Leitmann, CEO of Vision-Box, presents the new platform, named orchestra, as “The only common-use management platform bringing stakeholders together, building powerful business intelligence and helping to cope with soaring passenger numbers while offering a unique passenger-centric experience. Airports have to go digital: what really needs to expand is not physical space or resources; it is intelligence. And for that you need powerful orchestration.”

orchestra is, in fact, the first platform ever based on an end-to-end self-service passenger experience, transforming passenger information and people’s flow into actionable intelligence for exponentially accelerated efficiency, enhanced risk anticipation, improved security and new revenue growth.

How? As a passenger goes through the airport, biometrics are used as a single authentication token to activate transactions at each touch-point by consuming services and data from a virtual Passenger Data Envelope which will be used by stakeholders according to privacy by design and permission-based policies to improve efficiency, security, as well as to offer better services.

For instance, transactional information on passenger flows help Airports plan operations, understand tendencies and anticipate events, such as congestion and seasonality in movements. Predictive models allow for proactive actions such as allocating fixed and movable human and physical resources, activating preventive measures, etc. Learning more about passengers, flows, dwelling times, trends and behaviors unveils a goldmine of opportunities for retailer partners and, therefore, airports as well as for airlines through frequent travel programmes. The biometric token may even be used by passengers to access lounges or even pay while shopping.

For an Airline, the information that a delayed passenger will not arrive on time at the boarding gate may be worth an on-time flight, which is today one of the main drivers for customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Border Control Authorities make the decision to authorize a passenger to enter or leave a country according to the validation of their documents, biometric identity and watch lists consultation, or activate measures based on risk profiles, among others.

The full-fledged orchestra intertwines all these data inputs and outputs and translates them into actionable information for stakeholders, according to the Privacy by Design methodology, which is based on a set of intelligent layers which guarantee a secure and segmented information orchestration to safeguard compliance to any legal requirements and personal data protection framework.

Leitmann added, “The digital transformation of airports goes well beyond small technology experiments which fail, on a long-term basis, in achieving goals for the stakeholders and, especially, for the passenger. orchestra provides the holistic, overarching airport view the industry has been looking for, managing self-service biometric-enabled touch-points to achieve a superb, streamlined passenger process, and unlocking a world of security, efficiency and commercial benefits for those who want to offer superior service value for the passenger.”

To provide first-hand insights and testimonial, Vision-Box is honored to have James Fazio, CEO of Aruba Airport Authority, with Vision-Box CEO Miguel Leitmann, presenting “The happy flow revolution: passengers using the airport by themselves” at Passenger Terminal Expo in Cologne, from March 15th to 17th. orchestra will be presented at Vision-Box stand #7065, together with the new Vision-Box passenger app, AppyFlow, which constitutes the first mobile touch-point providing the passenger with a real-time interface with all stakeholders to start his journey off the Airport.