Thank you, Stephen!

Actually the new kiosks are IER as are the gate scanners for RFID and 1D / 2D Barcode.

Our mantra for this project was “no queues” and we’ve pretty much achieved this. The new airport environment has been operating for five days now and peak times are flowing really well.

A passenger with no bags to check can just go straight to gate and scan themsleves onto the aircraft using either a 2D barcode on an electronic ticket receipt (ETR), a 2D barcode sent to the mobile phone (using a bespoke J2Me downloadable application) or using our ePass which is the RFID tag.

A customer with bags goes to a kiosk and identifies themselves with one of the above methods or simply with a credit card or entering their name into an on-screen keyboard. They then print their bag-tag and tag their own bag, pick up a boarding pass and drop their bag onto an open conveyor belt.

Check out some great animated flythroughs on http://www.changingthewayyoufly.co.nz

Regards

Stephen Jones
Air New Zealand

A pass

The processes around self service are not patentable, only the technology deployed which is the invention itself, there are about 6 vendors including IBM that sell this technology.

I wonder though if they hurt themselves by still having a regular check in counter? I know the first time I flew Alaska out of there I checked in at the counter. I came to the counter first, and given that I was checking a bag it seemed more efficient, but they just checked me in and then had me drop my bag off down at the Alaska gates.

(I think it might actually be a Horizon counter, but given they’re relationship its like brown eggs versus white eggs, almost the same but not quite. My friend who works for Horizon will now disown me, but I digress…)

As for their patents, aren’t they in some way violating their fiduciary responsibility by not monetizing them? If they can keep the competition from using their ideas that gives them a better customer experience. They could still improve licensing in a way that protects them, say only license it to airlines that don’t compete, or ones that compete, but not for use at airports that they compete at. They could even license it by airport, say Southwest can use it all around the east coast, but not on the SEA or OAK airports. Alaska could even kick around some type of hybrid system at MCO and the like and share the baggage loading piece with Southwest, but keep their own kiosks or something. (I’m figuring MCO might actually work better since Southwest has a bigger presence in MCO, and I don’t know the number of flights they’ve got.) Although then again asking Southwest and Alaska to play nice and share is like asking Delta and US Airways to speak to each other like adults.