Stansted, East Midlands and Manchester Airports are turning to tech to improve the passenger experience.
Parent company Manchester Airports Group has selected global IT provider SITA to implement further passenger self-service across all three.
SITA has been awarded a five-year framework agreement to provide new check-in, self-bag drop and boarding points across the three airports and also to carry out a significant upgrade to Manchester Airport’s baggage reconciliation systems, allowing the airport to better track bags at key points across the journey.
SITA will provide more than 660 staffed and self-service common-use points at check-in, transfer and boarding across all three airports.
At Manchester Airport, the group’s busiest airport, SITA will significantly increase staffed and self-service check-in kiosks as well as introduce SITA’s self-bag drop in Terminals 1 and 3, where passengers can check-in their own bags in under a minute.
Nicholas Woods, CIO of MAG, said: “Our passenger numbers continue to grow rapidly across our three airports.
“At the same time our passengers want to spend as little time completing the travel steps such as check-in, bag drop and boarding.
“We recognise that better technology allows us to process more passengers as well as reduce queues and SITA have provided a solution to deliver on both requirements.”
As part of the baggage reconciliation system upgrades at Manchester Airport, baggage will be smoothly tracked so that each bag is accounted for at every step of the journey.
This will have a tremendous impact on reducing the possibility of a bag being mishandled, providing passengers more certainty on where their bags are at all times.
Sergio Colella, SITA president for Europe, said: “With more than 60 million passengers per year across three airports, we can help MAG meaningfully streamline their passenger and baggage processes to accommodate even more passengers while providing a smooth, seamless experience for each of those passengers.
“It is a great pleasure to be able to support MAG’s growth plans over the next few years.”