Airport Automation to Speed Up for a Crisis Rebound With Less Human Contact

Airport executives are still in crisis management mode. The pandemic is forcing them to make agonizing operational decisions. Yet the executives will soon resume thinking about the long term. And when they do, airport executives will consider increased automation as a top priority, experts said. "The entire passenger's journey through a terminal has to be rethought around themes of new conventions for personal space and new concepts for protecting wellness," said Jonathan Massey, co-leader of the aviation sector at Corgan, a Dallas-based architecture firm that has worked on many terminals. "We're looking at hospital design to see what may be relevant to apply to terminal design, for instance." Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport underscores the twin trends of short-term crisis management and long-term interest in automation. Schiphol postponed on Monday its planned June decision to award a contract to build a new terminal until a date that they'll set later. But at the same time, Sch