By 2016, 80% of the roughly 200 airlines participating in the SITA/Airline Business IT Trends Survey.plan to offer mobile boarding passes through their own apps, up from the current 53%., the survey found.

And the use of third-party apps for mobile boarding passes is slated to be the norm for 62% of global airlines by 2016, up from the current 21% of carriers, the survey found.

Airlines thus are showing no qualms about in a sense outsourcing the distribution of their mobile boarding passes to companies such as Apple, Samsung and Google, and passengers are getting more convenience as their boarding passes through these apps will pop up on their smartphones when they reach the environs of the airport.

In other mobile developments, while a majority of airlines currently offer mobile check-in and flight search, over the next three years a majority of airlines will add missing bag reporting (60%) and rebooking capabilities (63%), the survey found.

Both missing bag reporting and rebooking capabilities, if they are handled adeptly through mobile offerings, will save travelers lots of wasted time at the airport or on the phone trying to get relief from customer services agents.

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SimpliFlying's Shashank Nigam, speaking earlier today at SITA's Air Transport IT Summit in Brussels, Belgium. / SITA Online

SimpliFlying CEO and founder Shashank Nigam believes airlines should offer free, onboard Wi-Fi, and that many of airlines and airports are laying their marketing on too thick and clumsily in social media. Nigam presented his views at SITA’s 2013 Air Transport IT Summit outside Brussels today, and Skift caught up with him afterwards.

Nigam: I have a very strong opinion about that. The paid Wi-Fi model right now just breaks. With a $12 fee, neither do you get enough adoption as it’s only around 5%, and that’s not enough to make any money off that. And neither do you provide any sort of customer experience enhancement. So decide: Do you want to make money? Then charge $50 for it. Or do you want to provide a customer service, and then provide Wi-Fi for free.

And, when you provide it free, there are lots of revenue opportunities. Imagine every plane as a marketing node in the sky where you are able to market tours to people flying to Chicago, the boat tours. And people traveling back home from Chicago, you can market grocery shopping. And on every purchase you might make 1%, on Amazon.com, for example. So work with partners, and see how you can leverage this. And, one airline is doing this very well. Mango Airlines in South Africa is using its free Wi-Fi for a customer service. They partnered with Vodacom, which gives them the revenue, and it is a very good ecosystem.

Skift: At one point you mentioned that airlines and airports should get off of Facebook and Twitter because they don’t really listen to passengers anyway. What did you mean by that?

Nigam: When I said stop doing that I meant stop doing it as you are doing it right now, which is marketing and addressing the guy on the couch tweeting about you just as much as the the number one frequent flyer who is often ignored just because he doesn’t have as many Twitter followers as the guy on the couch. So airlines should really be refocusing their effort toward customer service, ancillary revenue, and loyalty rather than just generic marketing.

Skift: How does mobile play into these efforts?

Nigam: Mobile is critical. You can’t have a QR code on a bus and when you scan it you go on a full website because, guess what? People are going on their mobile phones to scan. Mobile is critical; 70% access Facebook through mobile so why not your website.

Skift: Which airlines and airports are doing an especially good job in social and mobile and which ones are failing in their efforts?

Nigam: When it comes to customer service, I would Turkish Airlines is doing well, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and, of course, we know about KLM. KLM does a phenomental job in terms of brand engagement. They are launching a new Facebook game where you can manage your airline company. You can buy planes, buy slots, manage landings, things there. It is really engaging. KLM does it well. In Asia you have the likes of Air Asia; which is very proactive. Even others like Cathay Pacific, Royal Brunei Airlines, i.e. legacy carriers are doing very well.

Skift: You were talking about KLM and its Facebook game, but that doesn’t really enhance the passenger experience, right?

Nigam: I think it’s a full spectrum. Until now airlines have overdone the branding engagement and marketing side of things. There is a need to balance it with the passenger experience. For example, KLM has Meet & Seat. You can sit next to a LinkedIn or Facebook friend or make introductions. KLM, I would say, is balanced, but most airlines are not. They just just do the marketing stuff or run a contest. But, guess what? If you are a low cost carrier and you give away an exit row, and Emirates might come along and give away a first class suite with a shower free, how do you compete with that? So you really must look at who your customers are, what they are doing, and how you can add value to their experience through social media.

Skift: You mentioned that Qatar Airways is doing some really interesting things in its apps from a passenger experience standpoint?

Nigam: I believe Qatar Airways has the prototype iPad app with augmented reality included in it. You can actually point your iPad out of the window and look at what’s beneath and possibly learn more about it on Wikipedia, and even book a hotel perhaps in that place, which may or may not be a partner hotel. You can can also schedule your movies, you can schedule your in-flight experience. In two hours I want to have my meal, and in the next two hours I want to watch a movie and this information is potetially communicated to the flight attendant.

Skift: Which airlines or airports really stick out as needing to get their social media act together?

Nigam: Some European ones, which have been very erratic in terms of tweeting. Ryanair is one which publicly refuses to be on social media and says we don’t care about customers. Our price is the product and because of that people will come to us.

Skift: But Ryanair is successful anyway even without social media.

Nigam: Yes, because there is always a new bunch of backpackers who want to go to Valencia for a few days.

Skift: But you don’t think Ryanair’s social media abstinence is an effective long-term strategy?

Nigam: No. You have to go where your customers are. These days 70% of travelers are logging onto Facebook while they are traveling. They are not going to airline.com. Hence you should be be on Facebook in order to engage them while they are traveling rather than just doing promotions when they get back.

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That status used to require flying 25,000 miles per year. Now, United is adding a requirement for at least $2,500 in spending, too, to qualify for status in its MileagePlus program.

Most frequent fliers would spend that much anyway if they are earning 25,000 miles. But those who buy discounted tickets might be affected.

Travelers like to get so-called “elite” status because of seat upgrades and other perks.

The change takes effect next year for travelers trying to earn status in 2015. Taxes and bag fees won’t count toward the spending total.

United Continental Holdings Inc. announced the change Tuesday. It matches a change made by Delta Air Lines Inc. in January.

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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The initiative could cut up to half the time needed to get from the check-in to boarding the aircraft.

While a saving of around two minutes a person appears minimal, with Gatwick handling 55,000 passengers a day the changes could have a dramatic impact on how the airport operates.

Traditionally passengers arrive at the airport, drop off their bag and have to present their boarding card or inspection twice before getting on board the plane – once at security and again at the boarding gate.

In addition passengers also have to show their passport at the boarding gate to verify their identity, which is compared against the boarding pass.

The new system, which was tested for three months earlier this year. entails a passenger having a photograph taken of their iris when they check in luggage which is linked to the boarding pass.

Anyone travelling with only hand luggage is photographed as they go through security.

This information is stored and means the passenger’s identity is verified by the image of their iris as they pass through the airport.

At the boarding gate alone, this was found to save at least 15 seconds a person, saving potentially 15-20 minutes for loading an aircraft.

It is hoped this will enable Gatwick to handle more flights because of reduced time needed to keep a plane on the stand.

While iris recognition has been shelved for international flights at Gatwick, it is still in place for domestic flights.

This is to prevent illegal immigrants, who have just flown into Britain, trying to sidestep border controls by swapping boarding passes in the departure lounge with somebody who is already in the country as passports are not inspected on domestic flights.

Gatwick is in discussion with airlines over rolling out the technology across the airport as a whole over the next two years.

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In this Sunday, May 26, 2013 photo, several flights get ready to take off after a couple of days of bad weather disrupted flight services at Lukla airport, Nepal. Niranjan Shrestha / AP Photo

As soon as the decades-old Twin Otter landed at Lukla airport, passengers burst out in applause. They do that for nearly every safe landing at the often terrifying airport at the gateway to Mount Everest.

At an altitude of 2,843 meters (9,325 feet), the small airstrip here has earned a reputation as one of the most extreme and dangerous airports in the world. The single runway is narrow, short and sloped. Miss the runway by a few meters (or feet) and the plane would hit a mountain.

“After you cross the river there is no turning back, you have to land,” said Pramod Poudel, a Tara Air pilot who has flown hundreds of these flights to Lukla.

Carved out of the side of a mountain, the airport was built by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1965 — 12 years after he became the first man to conquer the world’s highest peak — to help the local yak herders known as Sherpas spur development in the impoverished area.

Now what once was a dirt strip is one of Nepal’s busiest airports, the Tenzing-Hillary Airport — named as well for Hillary’s climbing partner Tenzing Norgay. The thousands of mountaineers and trekkers who visit the Everest region have to fly to the airport if they want to avoid a daylong bus trip from Katmandu and five days of trekking to reach here.

The airport has handled up to 79 flights on one day — far beyond the acceptable capacity for such a facility, said Rinji, the airport’s air traffic controller, who, like most Sherpas in the Everest region, uses only one name.

“It is really challenging, because of the geographical location of the airport and high mountains that surround it. Topography is challenging and the traffic volume is challenging,” said Rinji. “There is little space for aircraft to maneuver because of the high mountains and narrow valley.”

Poudel, the pilot, said he and his colleagues need to concentrate hard when landing on the single runway, which is less than 500 meters (yards) long, slopes some 12 degrees and is barely 20 meters (65 feet) wide.

“Because there is no way to go around again, we have to calculate many things like air speed, tail wind, fog,” he said. “If you don’t do the proper calculation or proper exercise, then it” — meaning an accident — “happens.”

The airport can only handle special short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft like the Twin Otter or Dronier that take about 18 passengers. It has room for only four of these planes to be parked at one time.

The runway is one-way for both takeoff and landing. Aircraft have to land from the southwest and take off toward the northeast because at the end of one side of the runway is a mountain. When winds are blowing in an unfavorable direction, all takeoffs and landings have to stop.

Crashes are not uncommon.

In 2008, 18 people were killed when a Twin Otter plane belonging to the domestic Yeti Airlines smashed into the side of the runway and caught fire while trying to land in heavy fog. Investigators said the pilot should not have attempted to land in those conditions.

In August 2010, 14 people were killed when a Dronier belonging to the domestic Agni Air crashed after it was forced to turn around due to bad weather conditions at Lukla. In May 2004, another Yeti Airlines Twin Otter crashed while approaching Lukla, killing all three occupants in an accident blamed on heavy cloud buildup and pilot misjudgment.

One plane was unable to stop on the short runway and smashed into a wall. Another skidded off the runway. A third lost its front landing gear as it tried to land and skidded down the runway, forcing the airport to shut for two days. No one was killed in those crashes.

In addition to trekkers, the flights bring in food, construction materials, beer and other supplies required by the local population in this poor area.

And it has changed life here.

Once a tiny village, Lukla now has 3,000 people, many of them drawn to tourism work. Sherpas wait outside the airport hoping to be hired as porters by trekkers staying in the mountains for anywhere from a few days to a month.

But the burgeoning population attracted by the airport has also created severe drinking water shortages and sewage problems. And when a curtain of fog descends on the airport during the popular October trekking season, flights can be cancelled for days. As many as 2,500 passengers have been left stranded here with little food and no accommodation.

Even on its best days, the airport is open for only a few hours.

A man named Funru said his father once owned the land where the airport sits and helped Hillary dig the airstrip.

“When I first began working at the airport, it used to be nothing like this. It was like a river bank. Every evening we had to collect rocks and fill the potholes so flights could land the next morning,” Funru said.

Gurubacharya contributed to this story from Katmandu.

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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… The holographic announcer I met is named Carla. She is a product by Tensator, a “queue control and management solutions” brand. Installed in June of last year, an aviation trade publication reported she cost the airport only 26,000 dollars. The avatar runs 24 hours a day and is portable so she can be moved to other areas of the terminal.

Carla is kind and calm in demeanour, with big eyes and a bright smile. Her resolution is so crisp one might mistake her for flesh and blood even at close distance. She greets you with folded hands before breaking into prestidigitation: a quart-sized clear plastic bag full of toiletries floats like magic into her flexed fingers. “Now that your liquid items are ready, let’s get you prepared for your departure security check,” she says.

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Read the Complete Story...

A rural community of less than 5,000 people, according to Polish government statistics, it is a location that during World War II served as a battleground for Soviets to face off with Nazis.

Miastkowo falls between Western Europe and Asia: flyover country for Euro-Sino, Euro-Russian, and Amero-Middle Eastern travel alike. If it weren’t for the draw of the Americas this balance point could have fallen in neighboring Belarus to the west, or if there were fewer flights in Asia it might have been farther west, closer to Warsaw.

Quartz derived this location by calculating the average midpoint of the more than 61,000 international flight routes in the Openflights Database. The database was last updated in December.

Just as the center of a square is the average midpoint of the lines connecting its corners, the center of air travel is the the average midpoint of the routes connecting airports. In Quartz’s model, each airport was counted as many times as there were routes that originated or terminated at that location. Each route was counted as many times as there were airlines that flew it.

Some of the flights were long, like Sydney to Los Angeles. Others were much shorter, like Luxembourg to Paris. The average distance of every route was 1,639 miles (about the distance of Tel Aviv to Prague), though most are less than 1,110 miles (shorter than a flight from New Orleans to Toronto). The longest international flight in the database is the 9,540 mile trip from Newark, New Jersey to Singapore. The shortest is an 11-mile jump from Monaco to Nice, France.

This story originally appeared on Quartz, a Skift content partner.

Additional links from Quartz:

• Why flying first class increases your carbon footprint by six times
  
• How a restaurant with no cash registers and no prices makes money
• $314 million in shark ecotourism probably won’t dent the global fin trade, but it’s a start

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A new study from the South Jersey Transportation Authority finds there were far fewer passengers on planes and trains, and fewer casino buses and cars heading into town than in the same period in 2012.

Israel Posner, the director of the Lloyd D. Levenson Institute of Gaming, Hospitality and Tourism, tells the Press of Atlantic City that the data show that the effects of the storm are still lingering.

Atlantic City was not hit as hard by last year’s storm as places farther north on the shore.

Source: South Jersey Transportation Authority

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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About 150 passengers have missed flight on Alaska Airlines since Sunday because of waits of more than an hour in security lines, airline spokeswoman Marianne Lindsey said Thursday.

“Summer travel season is on,” she said.

The airline is sending text messages to travelers advising them to prepare for an hour at security checkpoints, she said.

The worst times are between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. when Alaska has 60 flights departing. Alaska is the largest single carrier at Sea-Tac.

The airport advises passengers to arrive two hours early, said spokeswoman Christina Faine.

SeaTac averages about 100,000 passengers a day from June through August, compared to about 85,000 off-season.

“The length of lines at security checkpoints varies by airport and travel season. A fluctuation in wait times can be seen especially during peak travel such as summer break,” said regional Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Lorie Dankers.

Wait times Thursday morning were around 9 minutes, she said.

The delays are frustrating for everyone involved.

“We let them know we’re going to have full loads,” Lindsey said. “Truthfully, they should have been prepared for the influx. The loads we’re seeing are not uncommon for this time of year. This is our busy season.”

Copyright (2013) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Today Heathrow authorities announced that Terminal 2 would be known as The Queen’s Terminal upon its opening in June of 2014.

The new Queen’s Terminal replaces a structure torn down in 2010 that had been built in 1955 and housed Heathrow’s original first terminal. Incidentally, the current Queen dedicated the terminal upon its opening nearly 60 years ago (see image, above).

The new terminal will cost £2.5 billion and will be completed this November, after which authorities will carry out seven months of testing in order to avoid the problems that plagued the opening of Terminal 5.

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