Airport IT budgets take off as cost savings take back seat

Worldwide airport IT budgets are set to hit $2bn this year, with security and major infrastructure projects taking priority over cost savings, according a survey by an airline industry IT body.

Almost two-thirds of airport IT executives questioned expect increased budgets to boost their IT and telecoms investment above the current average of four per cent of revenues.

The results are part of the first Airport IT Trends Survey conducted by Airports Council International (ACI), SITA and Airline Business magazine.

Top spending priorities are IT infrastructure projects and security, followed by passenger and baggage processing and the integration of current systems. Improvements in operational efficiency ranked as the lowest priority.

But Catherine Mayer, VP of airport services at SITA, told silicon.com that the huge investment in bringing network infrastructures up to date is inextricably linked with operational efficiencies anyway.

"Looking at the results of where the projects are being implemented, the majority are around network and telecoms infrastructure, IP and VoIP. We're finally catching up. These priorities go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other," she said.

A quarter of airports already use biometric identification for employees and this is predicted to rise to more than 50 per cent by 2006. Only four per cent plan to introduce biometric ID for passengers in the next year but 20 per cent plan to implement the technology within the next two years.

The biometric technologies used for employee trials were fingerprint (67 per cent), hand geometry (17 per cent) and facial recognition (eight per cent). Biometric technologies to be used for passenger trials included fingerprinting (24 per cent), iris scanning (24 per cent) and facial recognition (six per cent).

In other technology areas, more than 80 per cent have already implemented Internet Protocol (IP) systems and while just 13 per cent have VoIP, 60 per cent plan to introduce it during the next two years.

More than 96 per cent of airports plan to implement wireless and web services by 2006, and in the next two years, 40 per cent of airports expect to trial ecommerce facilities for tenants and mobile commerce payment services.

RFID is still in its infancy in airports, with just eight per cent currently offering RFID tracking for passenger baggage, although this is predicted to grow to about a quarter of airports in the next two years.

The survey was conducted by NSM research in the last quarter of 2003 and the first quarter of 2004 and 48 responses were received from the top 200 airport groups, representing 50 per cent of industry revenues.