Airport parking

More ways airports are going contactless

5 Ways Your Next Airport Visit Could Be Contactless

(This is a slightly different version of a story we prepared for USA TODAY)

In addition to cleaning, sanitizing, and setting up COVID-19 testing stations, airports are responding to the pandemic by making the journey through the terminal increasingly touch-free.

In pre-COVID days, some of the new contactless services would have been presented as convenient amenities. Today, they are part of the tool kit for keeping passengers safe and healthy, and confident enough to travel.

Contactless Airport Parking

Before the pandemic, some airports offered travelers the option to reserve and prepay for parking online. An assured spot in the terminal garage during busy times was the attraction. Sometimes perks such as close-in spaces and discounted rates enticed travelers to give the amenity a try.

Now, many more airports are promoting and launching touch-free parking systems. Travelers can avoid having to push a button to get a ticket on the way in and bypass the payment kiosk or staffed booth on the way out.

For example, at Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) customers who book parking online get a scannable QR code via email that opens the garage gate. A license plate reader recognizes their vehicle when they exit. San Francisco International Airport’s new touchless online parking system, rolled out right before Thanksgiving, works with scanned QR codes as well.

Contactless check-in & bag drop, biometric gates

 

Pre-pandemic, most passengers knew about but did not always use online check-in, digital boarding passes, and technology that let them print their own luggage tags at home and check in their own bags at the airport. Now those no or low-contact options are all but mandatory.

Airports and airlines are also piloting and fast-tracking a wide range of biometric technology and other tools that make the airport journey a bit more touch-free.

Aviation technology company SITA and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) recently piloted a system that allows passengers to use smartphones to operate check-in kiosks and avoid having to touch the communal screens. SITA’s Smart Path biometric touch-free boarding and exit gates are also operating at Orlando International Airport.  

And multiple airlines are now testing a digital health passport, called CommonPass. The app will safely store health information needed for travel and eliminate the need for passengers to hand over paper copies of COVID 19 test results.

The security checkpoint

The Transportation Security Administration is reducing touchpoints at many airport security checkpoints. 

More than 834 Credential Authentication Technology (CAT) units that reduce the time needed to confirm a traveler’s identity and allow travelers to put their own IDs into the scanner are now in use at 115 airports. And new computed tomography checkpoint scanners at 267 airports give TSA officers a 3-D view of carry-on bags. This decreases the need to open and touch bags and reduces the contact time between TSOs and passengers.

Touchless food ordering and delivery

Before COVID-19, the Grab app let hungry travelers skip lines and use their mobile devices to order meals for pick-up from a limited number of restaurants in a limited number of airports. 

Avoiding airport lines is more important now. So, airports in Los Angeles, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul and other cities are partnering with Grab to create accessible platforms that expand touch-free ordering options and broaden the number of participating concessions.

In a growing number of airports, runners for At Your Gate make in-terminal deliveries of meals and other items ordered via mobile devices from airport restaurants, newsstands, and retail shops.

The service, currently offered at LGA, JFK, EWR, DEN, BOS, SAN, MSP, PDX, and PHL is getting even more convenient and contactless at SAN and some other airports with the introduction of robots.

In partnership with Piaggio Fast Forward, At Your Gate delivery teams in JFK, MSP, DEN, and SAN will soon be joined in their rounds by small Gita robots. Each follow-along robot has a bin that can carry up to 40 pounds and will be used for contactless delivery of meals and retail items ordered.  

Virtual information booths

Many airport information desks are going contactless. At Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF), LAX, DEN, BWI and other airports, passengers now use a touch-free tablet, a kiosk, or their own mobile device to connect with customer service agents who answer questions live, but from a distance.

Airlines are jumping on this bandwagon too. In December United Airlines debuted its “Agent on Demand,” service which lets customers in the airline’s hub airports use a mobile device to call, text, or have a live video chat with a customer service agent.

Frankfurt Airport has pink parking spaces for women

The 250 “Ladies Parking” spaces have been scattered throughout the garages at Frankfurt Airport since 2013, but suddenly they’re super controversial and in the news.

Chalk it up to the internet (someone incorrectly dubbed them ‘new’ in a blog post and the story took off) and to our collective “Are you serious?” reaction when stereotypes surface.

Here’s some of what I wrote about Frankfurt Airport’s “Ladies Parking” for USA TODAY:

There are 14,000 parking spaces at Frankfurt Airport, but if you want one that’s “bigger, nicer and closer to the terminals,” look for spots reserved for women only.

The specially designed parking sections are scattered throughout the airport’s parking garages and are easy to find: a pink ribbon of paint on the floor marks off the wider-than-average parking spots and the pink-painted walls.

Why are they there?

“In Germany, it is a legal requirement to provide these designated parking spaces for women,” said Frankfurt Airport spokesman Robert Payne.

Why are they painted pink? “For quick and easy recognition by women drivers, who are sometimes traveling with children,” he said. And to let other drivers — i.e. men – know not to park in those spot. “They cannot say they didn’t notice the bright pink area designated for women drivers,” said Payne.

Rules requiring women-only parking sections in many parts of Germany were created more for safety than for convenience back in the 1990s.

Today many consider these set-asides patronizing and truly sexist.

Free car wash at Spokane Int’l Airport

Spokane Airport car wash

It’s only Thursday, but we’re declaring the free car wash offered at Spokane International Airport the airport amenity of the week.

Opened in November – right before big Thanksgiving travel rush – the car wash at GEG is already quite popular. Complimentary for anyone who parks in the airport garages ($10/day) or on in the outside lot ($8/day), in December 889 cars got a free bath. In In January – 1,360.

Why would an airport offer a free car wash?

Airport spokesman Todd Woodard explains it this way:

“We serve a geographically diverse 80,000 square mile region that covers parts of three States and two Canadian Provinces. As a regional transportation asset, we feel a particular obligation to express our appreciation as many drive significant distances to access our air service.”

Spokane Airport car was sign

Fresh parking amenities at DEN & CVG airports

DEN Airport parking

New LED signs in the Pikes Peak shuttle lot at Denver International Airport let passengers know when the next bus will arrive.

Anyone who has parked their car in an airport parking lot on a dark, cold, snowy morning and stood there wondering when – and if – the shuttle bus to the airport was coming by will appreciate the new amenity being introduced at Denver International Airport this week.

The airport has added LED display screens to the 18 parking shelters in its Pikes Peak shuttle lot (where the rates are currently $8/day) that use GPS to let passengers know when the next parking lot shuttle bus will arrive.

LED signs should be added to the Mt. Elbert shuttle lot ($8 per day) and the east and west economy lots ($13 per day) next spring, but for now travelers can find out when the shuttle bus is coming by the shelters in those parking lots via phone, text or QR codes using a smartphone.

CVG Cart

Meanwhile, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG), has added courtesy golf carts that will operate daily to shuttle passengers from their car to the elevators and escalators in the terminal garage and back to their car. (The airport is also offering a discount coupon for holiday parking).

Inside CVG, there’s also a new all-access lounge – The Club at CVG – offering complimentary snacks, bar service, Wi-Fi and comfortable seating for $35 a day – no matter which airline you’re flying on- and at cost below what the airline lounges usually charge for a day pass.

The club is on Concourse A, between Gates A8 and A10 and you can get $5 off the $35 fee by using the coupon on this page. The same company also operates club rooms at airports in San Jose (SJC), Atlanta (ATL), Phoenix (PHX), Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) and two at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. You can purchase day passes for those clubs here.