128 Smart Gates at Dubai International for border control

Over 80 % airport passengers had auto-preclearance in 2018

Drones among biggest modern challenges to the airports

No ‘one size fits all’ solution for airport privatisation

Dubai, April 30, 2018: Dubai International, the world’s number one airport for international travellers for the past five years, has 128 Smart Gates which helped millions of passengers clear the border control formalities within a record span of six to nine seconds on an average, an official told a conference in Dubai.

In her presentation at the Global Airport Leaders Forum (GALF) which kicked off as a co-located event at the 19th edition of Airport Show at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC), Radwa Hozien, Chief Software Officer at emaratech, a technology and management consulting company of the Investment Corporation Dubai (ICD), said DXB last year handled an average of 120,000 passengers daily in the peak time, with the processing time for immigration formalities taking a few  seconds to process per passenger.

According to the IATA, 80 per cent of the global passengers will be offered with a complete and relevant self-service suite throughout their journeys even as iris biometric becoming more and more accurate, she said, adding the Next-Gen technology has been helping process the entry and exit of passengers amazing faster than ever before. Technology, she added, has been helping the airport and other authorities to know the passenger much before he/she arrives at the airport for their journeys.

In his keynote address, Abdulqader Ali, CEO of Smartworld, the telecom provider for Dubai South and Managed Services provider for UAE government entities, said there will be 30 million Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) by 2021, posing a serious challenge to the functioning of airports across the world. The scenario has been undergoing a paradigm shift from them being gradually shifting from 2D to 3D, requiring new technologies to stop UAS posing challenges and threats and controlling them effectively.

In his address, Dieter Heinz, Honorary President of German Airport Technology and Equipment (GATE), highlighted the major milestones of airport technology which the Dubai had used it extensively to improvise the performance and efficiencies of its airports much to everyone’s delight. 

He praised the authorities for continuing their proactive approach and being a good model for airport management.

In another panel discussion on ‘Privatisation leading to Smart Airports’, another group of experts referred to the bottlenecks and hurdles coming in the way towards airport privatisation. Javed Malik, Group COO, AirAsia, Stefan Ruter, CFO, Oman Airports, Keven Riordan, Head of Airport and Checkpoint Solutions, Smiths Detection and Brian Kaasner Krishtiansen, Managing Director of Epinion Global, participated. Dr. Fethi Chebil, an aviation advisor, moderated. The panellists suggested optimizing the assets by benefiting from the different streams of revenues available at the airports.