This article originally published in Self-Service World magazine, June 2007.
Vacationers take notice: If you plan to fly out of a major United States airport this summer, there's a chance you may be swiping your own ticket, scanning your own passport and tagging your own baggage, regardless of which airline you fly.
Self-service kiosks are nothing new. They have been busy fixtures at many U.S. and international airports for more than a decade, enabling travelers to perform many check-in procedures themselves, with one hitch: Passengers have to find a kiosk that services the particular airline with whom they're flying.
But all of that is beginning to change. The newer, more customer-friendly common-use self-service kiosks already have begun replacing airline-specific kiosks. The emergence of CUSS technology allows travelers from different airlines to check in at the same kiosk.
Ron Reed is the marketing director for SITA Airport Services, a company that focuses on providing IT services to airports. He said the CUSS kiosks eliminate the confusing "newspaper rack" of self-service technology that so many travelers face when they walk into the airport.
"When you see a newspaper rack, you see USA Today, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Wall Street Journal. You have to decide which newspaper you want," Reed said, adding that, with CUSS, choosing a check-in kiosk will be much simpler.
"When you walk into an airport with common-use kiosks, it's more efficient just to walk to the first kiosk available without having to check and see which airline the kiosk belongs to."
What's new with CUSS
Consolidation isn't the only attractive feature of this new generation of self-service kiosks. If industry leaders have their way, airports soon will roll out CUSS kiosks with new applications that will make it possible for passengers not only to check in for flights, but also to purchase tickets or change their flight — all without ever interacting with an airline representative.
"What you're seeing a lot now is that a person might make their booking on the Web, but when they get to the kiosk to check in, there might be an earlier flight that's available; or, their business meeting might have run late, so they'll want to change to a later flight," said Mark Brommersma, a self-service solutions manager for IBM. He said the new CUSS kiosks will allow the traveler to do all of that in one stop.
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| CUSS kiosks are spreading, albeit slowly, and picking up new functionalities as they go. (Photo courtesy IBM) |
"It will make things more efficient at check-in because people who just want to bag tag or drop a bag or get a boarding pass obviously won't have to queue up and stand in line," said Steve Lott, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association (IATA). "The lines will be for people who have more complicated issues to deal with."
‘Self-service security'
The new kiosks will have significant ramifications for international travel. Reed said plans already are under way to introduce kiosks with full-page document scanners that passengers can use to scan important travel documents such as passports and visas. The kiosks will read the documentation and accept or reject it based on its authenticity.
Giving airline passengers the ability to check in to their international flights without ever showing their travel documents to a human being is a proposition that might rile some advocates of tighter airport security, but Brommersma is quick to vouch for the new technology. Passengers still will have to interact with a live person at the security checkpoint, he said.
"The kiosk is about getting you checked-in. Certainly they're validating that you have the correct travel documents, like a passport. But the next step in the process is that you're still going to see someone and you're going to have to clear security and you're going to have to go through that process as well," Brommersma said.
Reed said one of the toughest challenges for kiosk manufacturers will be working with the various international governments to develop passports, visas and other official documentation that is "machine readable."
"When you're talking about global deployment, you have to make sure there are certain standards that you meet that satisfy the governments," he explained.
The future is now (or at least soon)
CUSS kiosks are spreading, but you still won't see these changes at every airport.
While airline-specific check-in kiosks are widely available, figures released by the IATA in March show CUSS kiosks have been installed in only six U.S. airports. Those airports include the much-covered Las Vegas McCarran International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Pittsburgh International Airport, and New York's JFK International Airport and Westchester County Airport. But more are coming.
According to IATA's figures, 14 other U.S. airports have contracted to have the kiosks installed. Of that number, five expect to have the kiosks running by year-end 2007.
Worldwide, about 55 CUSS kiosks have been installed in places such as Europe, Canada, North Asia and Africa. Roughly 30 additional airports have committed to implementation.
Reed said CUSS kiosks' new features — barcode scanners, baggage-label printers and document scanners — will be deployed slowly over 2007. But travelers could see some of them as early as this summer.
Just in time for vacation.
