View from the top

ACI World director general, Luis Felipe de Oliveira, reflects on the key role technology, IT innovation and data will play in the future development and success of the world's airports.

Collaboration across the entire aviation ecosystem is essential to ensuring that it can function efficiently and grow sustainably.

After all, all aviation stakeholders share the biggest challenges – namely meeting the growth of air travel demand and reaching the long-term environmental goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, all amidst the current macro-economic setting of mounting debt levels, increase energy costs, workforce challenges, and other inflationary pressures.

Technology is key to facing our shared challenges to best serve travellers and communities worldwide. It is fundamental to improving operations and optimising the passenger experience across the travel journey.

In fact, according to key findings from the latest ACI World-SITA Airport IT Insights Survey – the most extensive study of IT trends within the global airport industry – airport chief information officers (CIOs) are eager to leverage IT solutions to fortify their operations against disruption while automating the passenger experience.

The industry’s IT spend is projected to continue its steady year-on-year growth trend since 2020 to support this push for digitalisation, with 93% of airports expecting their IT spend to stay the same or increase in 2023 compared to 2022. Last year’s airport IT spending rose to an estimated $6.8 billion.

And ACI World is here to help. The ACI World Airport IT Standing Committee (WAITSC) plays an important role in shaping ACI’s policy and guidance on technology. Among many of its successes, it delivered extensive guidance on digital transformation at airports during the pandemic.

In the past year, ACI World has been exploring and producing several resources to support our members in key IT areas including in the realm of Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).

The Implementation of AI and ML in the Security Checkpoint Whitepaper,supported by both Pangiam and Rheinberry, provides an excellent overview of what AI and ML are, how they work, and how they can benefit airports, including better security, efficiency, and a more seamless passenger journey.

Indeed, technology is key to sharing data and communicating across aviation stakeholders, including airlines, airports, ground handlers, and control authorities. In this regard, ACI World has several key initiatives, including the long-standing Aviation Community Recommended Information Services (ACRIS), which sets the standard for information and data exchange across aviation stakeholders through one common language.

The definition and implementation of standardised business processes and interoperable IT solutions is a vital issue for the global aviation industry, especially as a way to improve efficiency and to increase revenues.

In terms of leveraging data as a strategic asset, ACI World’s senior director of security, technology and innovation, Billy Shallow, in this issue delves into the Smart Data Hub concept, which takes a holistic approach to delivering business value from investments in enterprise data capabilities, helping airports become truly smart airports and deliver tangible business benefits.

And finally, but certainly not least, it is with great pleasure that we begin speaking about a new data project that we have been developing to provide live data in a standardised format to be consumed and displayed to customers in multiple digital channels.

This initiative follows the success of the Health Measures Portal, where over 300 airports provided data in a standard API, managed by ACI World and displayed to over 1.2 billion consumers via a number of applications including Apple Maps.

The proof of concept will start later this year and focus on providing live security wait time data from multiple airports to various digital channels. Stay tuned for more announcements on this.