Amadeus touchless bag drop tech trialled at Heathrow Airport
Amadeus is piloting touchless bag drop tech at London Heathrow Airport.
The touchless bag drop service taps proximity sensors to allow passengers to check-in their luggage without touching the screens on the kiosks.
The new contactless experience has initially been installed on six of Heathrow’s Auto Bag Drop (ABD) units provided by ICM Airport Technics, an Amadeus company.
The Amadeus contactless solution has an infra-red proximity sensor installed along the top edge of the bag drop screen, which detects the passenger’s finger as far as 3cm from the screen surface.
This allows passengers to interact with the bag drop unit as usual but without the need to physically touch the screen.
Heathrow’s Process Improvement Director, Mark Burgess said: "We’re delighted to be working with Amadeus to trial these touchless self-service bag drop units. This is just one of many new measures that we’re implementing across our terminals, as part of Heathrow’s Fly Safe programme."
ICM Airport Technics, which became part of Amadeus in 2019, has supplied more than 270 Auto Bag Drop (ABD) units to Heathrow since 2016 as the sole partner for self-service bag drop, which are shared by 30 airlines.
Over five million bags were dropped by passengers using this solution during 2019, with the self-service process taking less than 60 seconds on average.
Richard Dinkelmann, CEO, ICM Airport Technics, an Amadeus company, said: "We’re working closely with our airport and airline partners to deliver solutions that help them adapt passenger services to the new environment."
Amadeus and Heathrow have been trialling several contactless technologies for self-service over recent months, including ‘screen mirroring’, which allows the passenger to operate an ABD unit with their own mobile device..
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Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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