Flight fear shifts tech planning

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By Jennifer Disabatino

(IDG) -- Before the hijacking of four commercial airplanes on Sept. 11, the biggest IT imperative for most carriers was leveraging technology to get passengers through the airport and aboard their flights as quickly as possible.

Now, under more stringent security guidelines, at least one key project is on hold, and others are being reconsidered.

In April, United Air Lines Inc. in Chicago announced that it would install more than 1,100 self-service kiosks in 25 airports over the next two years at a cost of $150 million (see story). IBM was to provide the technology for the kiosks and handle the installation.

Last week, United spokeswoman Chris Nardella said those plans "are on hold now," though she added that an undetermined number of kiosks have been installed and continue to function in Chicago O'Hare International, Los Angeles International and San Diego International airports.

Nardella said United hasn't yet decided whether it will install more kiosks and what changes, if any, will be made to them to ensure security.

The kiosks were intended to speed check-in for travelers with e-tickets, who can insert a United frequent-flier card or major credit card for identification and get back a printed boarding pass. Now, United will have agents at the security checkpoints to double-check that the name on the ticket matches the photo ID of the ticketholder, Nardella said.

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By and large, the Federal Aviation Administration is leaving these kinds of security details to the discretion of individual airlines, and there are no plans to prohibit the use of kiosks for travelers, said an FAA spokesman. "The important thing to us is that people have the proper documents to get through the screener checkpoints," he said.

IBM has contracted with several airlines to install self-service kiosks. US Airways Group Inc., British Airways PLC and Air Canada have all signed deals with IBM, as did Ansett Airport in Sydney, Australia, and Inchon International Airport in South Korea.

Kiosks aren't the only technology that could be affected by new guidelines. "The entire airline industry evolved as an extension of their electronic networks and the networks' message structures and the quasi-automated e-commerce processes that evolved in and around them," said Richard Eastman, president of The Eastman Group Inc., an airline industry consulting firm in Newport Beach, Calif. "What Sept. 11 has done, in my mind, is open some doors to a new architecture model."

For starters, he said, reservation systems aren't set up to trigger an alarm if, for example, a large number of passengers don't show up for a flight or if a handful of passengers buy last-minute tickets at full fare. They are only inventories, not relational databases, and they can't do event-based functions, he said.

For its part, IBM doesn't have any specifics on how the new security guidelines will impact its various contracts with the airlines. "We're working with our customers, [but] it's hard to be more specific," said IBM spokeswoman Linda Hanson. "Obviously, there is some refocusing."

Robert Denahy, director of marketing for mobile printing at Zebra Technologies Corp. in Vernon Hills, Ill., said he sees a need to refocus his company's mobile printing technology that's used for curbside check-in and by roving agents to check baggage. For now, Denahy isn't sure if Zebra's labeling technology will help with airport security or need to be retooled to support more sophisticated security practices.

"A lot of these changes and a lot of these issues are uncertain," Denahy said. For example, Zebra's mobile printers could link baggage to passengers and their identification with the bar-code technology already in use. Zebra might also have to consider embedding biometrics into the bar-code information on baggage and boarding passes, he said.