Do It Yourself Airports

From Yahoo:

"The self-service airport"

Airlines are laying the groundwork for the next big step in the increasingly automated airport experience: a trip from the curb to the plane without interacting with a single airline employee.

For years, travelers have been checking in online or at airport kiosks, and more recently, airlines have converted paper boarding passes into electronic ones. Now carriers are turning to technology that enables travelers to check their own bags and scan those boarding passes—but not always without snags. At the airport of the near future, "your first interaction could be with a flight attendant," said Ben Minicucci, chief operating officer of Alaska Airlines.  After testing the technology in Austin, Texas, American Airlines is rolling out kiosks that direct travelers to tag their own checked bags in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other major airports over the next two years. And last month in Las Vegas, JetBlue became the first U.S. airline to officially implement self-boarding gates, where fliers scan their own tickets to board the plane. Airlines say the advanced technology will quicken the airport experience for seasoned travelers—shaving a minute or two from the checked-baggage process alone—while freeing airline employees to focus on fliers with questions. Airline-employee unions, however, say the machines are a way for carriers to cut staff by outsourcing preboarding tasks to fliers. "Clearly it's not something passengers are clamoring for," said Frank Larkin, spokesman for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. "More technology, fewer people? I don't think so." A recent SITA survey found self-boarding appeals to 70% of passengers and almost as many travelers want to tag their own bags. Self-tagging and self-boarding have each been implemented in 115 instances around the world, according to the International Air Transport Association. That global airline trade group is pushing for extending a complete self-service airport experience to 80% of the world's fliers by 2020 in order to save the industry $2.1 billion a year. The Transportation Security Administration said it has monitored pilot programs for self-tagging and self-boarding and approves of the technologies. U.S. airlines and airports are catching up to their counterparts in Europe, where Lufthansa began testing self-boarding in the late 1990s. The airline officially implemented the technology last year in its three main hubs in Germany, where customers have readily adapted to it. "A lot of our passengers are frequent fliers who really prefer not to talk with staff all the time," said Lufthansa spokesman Aage Duenhaupt. "They check-in online, get a mobile boarding pass and then use it at an automated boarding gate." British Airways and Iberia are also introducing a variety of self-service tools, including at Madrid's Barajas Airport, where Iberia has 30 kiosks that print checked-bag tags. New ID readers have sped the process to less than an average of 30 seconds, the airline said. Before long, travelers in many countries will be able to print baggage tags at home and insert the bar-coded paper in plastic cases distributed by airlines, similar to baggage tags that many already issue to their frequent fliers, SITA said. Qantas Airways of Australia already issues permanent electronic bag tags that store fliers' information. On a recent weekday, fliers of Canadian carrier WestJet largely breezed through the check-in process with the help of kiosks that printed their bag tags. But the process was hardly fully automatic: While a handful of travelers handled the process themselves, WestJet employees tapped through the kiosk screens for most fliers and then applied their bag tags. More agents then scanned the tags and boarding passes before sending the luggage to the plane.

^ I have used the self kiosks and the self gates (in Munich) and didn't care for them. I don't see the majority of Americans being able to deal with the self technology. I think this program will also do away with the handful of airline staff that you currently find. On paper it sounds great, but I don't think it will be good in practice. ^

http://travel.yahoo.com/ideas/the-self-service-airport.html