How can a departure control system help airports/airlines to recover during the pandemic?

Nowadays, the global pandemic has reached every sector of human life. Each of which has impacted to some degree. However, the aviation industry as well as few other industries have significantly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

Airports and airlines are under huge pressure to provide their passenger with clean travels to secure their health. Healthy protocols, hygiene, and social distancing are some of the tools, by which airlines and airports can enhance the passenger experience. Eliminating any contact and providing contact-less travel is another way to bring back the passengers' confidence in aviation travel once again. By today, various IT solutions and technologies have been introduced to do so. A departure control system as an IT solution, which is used by many airports, airlines, and ground handlers to handle passenger and boarding processes, has the capability to reduce the touch-points at airports and effectively preserve the physical distance at hot spots.

Departure Control System

Departure control system (DCS) is an IT solution developed to automate all processes and operations of airport management, including but not limited to: passenger check-in, baggage acceptance, boarding, and printing boarding cards and bag tags.

In a fully functional version, like the one developed by ABOMIS, the solution is able to connect with various airline reservation systems to capture, update, and identify passenger information automatically. It can also calculate the weight and balance of airplanes by a load control module and integrate into border control agency systems to send, receive, and handle the Advance Passenger Information (API) whenever and wherever it needs to be.

As seems, a DCS has various advantages in comparison to the manual process. It automates them, enhances efficiency and speed, and reduces the working hours, paper works, and contacts between staff and passengers. Such benefits can reduce the infection spreading in an airport. As a result, IT is better for airlines and airports that use manual processing for their operations to buy a DCS system. Its benefits are not limited to fighting against the current pandemic. Investment in a full functional DCS can bring huge profits for airlines, airports, and ground handling in many years.

Moreover, a DCS that has the below-mentioned benefits can effectively help airports and airlines to provide their passengers with a cleaner environment, reduce touch-points and contacts, and preserve physical distancing at airports:

Supporting self-service check-in and boarding

Legacy counter check-in brings about long queues, which consequently compromise physical distancing at airports and increase the probability of spreading of the infectious component. One way to cut these queues is by using various self-check-in modules such as web and kiosk check-in. They also enhance the passenger experience, decrease the departure time, and increase the profit of airlines and airports. Hand-held check-in for airport staff is another IT solution to help airlines during the current pandemic. Agents can roam at the airport and check the passengers in without any contact. ABOMIS DCS is one of these IT solutions which have all the aforementioned modules. The passengers can check themselves in at their home or work-place, print or save their boarding card, and walk through contact-less boarding gates without touching anything.

Wireless connections

The establishment of a wireless connection between kiosks at airports and passengers' mobile devices can provide a touch less check-in and bag drop kiosks that effectively reduce the spreading of infections. Such connections can be developed through Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Passengers can use their phones and tablets to ride the kiosks. Moreover, using a check-in kiosk that is able to scan the mobile screens and read QR codes is a practical solution for passengers to print their boarding cards without touching the kiosk screen.

Cost-effective

The growing competition between various aviation sectors and operators makes the cost of the IT solution important. The cost-effective solutions which have reasonable prices while providing the operators with enhanced operations are paramount to secure the profits of airlines and airports. Regarding the DCS solution, ABOMIS developed a full functional departure control system which enhances the airport and airline operations while having the lowest implementation and per passenger costs among in comparison to other DCS vendors.