The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) technologies presents a significant opportunity to enhance airport operational efficiency and passenger satisfaction. Improving the passenger experience extends beyond the functional aspects of travel to include the emotional and experiential dimensions. There is a clear opportunity to differentiate through personalized services and innovative offerings that cater to the diverse needs of today’s travelers.

In a discussion between Brian Prentice, partner in our Transportation and Services group, and Ian Law, the chief digital transformation officer at Los Angeles World Airports, the airport of the future will focus on the integration of technology in airport operations, enhancing the passenger experience, and streamlining passenger pain points like the baggage handling processes and terminal wayfinding.

Staying ahead of technological advancements and being open to innovation will be key for aviation leaders looking to navigate the future landscape of airport operations and passenger services effectively.

Ian Law
As an airport, as an airport operator, airlines, concessionaires, travelers, all want to know what's going on in the airport. They all want to know all the time what's going on and what may be about to go on.

Brian Prentice
I'm Brian Prentice, a partner at Oliver Wyman and our transportation group. I'm lucky enough this year to be at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. I'm joined today by Ian Law. What do you do for the Los Angeles World Airports?

Ian
There are two components to my role. One is the technology and digital component, which is just all about how we go about our work, how we digitize the guest experience at the airport, but also, the guest experience. So, it's got an IT and non-IT component, which is a guest experience piece as well, which is all about experience, innovation. And that's really fun because that's actually where the rubber hits the road as it were. You're out in the terminals, you see how people are experiencing the airports, you're trying to think of new ways to improve it and so on. And then sometimes it has a digital component and sometimes it doesn't.

Brian
Talking about airports of the future and one of the things that you talked about that was kind of fascinating to me was there's lots of video cameras and photo opportunities around the airport where I think you said 48 megapixels and two frames a second or something like that. It seems to me that that amount of information combined with some of these new AI, Gen AI technologies, provides a lot of opportunity for efficiency, for safety, for passenger experience. How are you thinking about using some of that technology in your airports?

Ian
First off, as an airport, as an airport operator, airlines, concessionaires, travelers, all want to know what's going on in the airport. They all want to know all the time what's going on and what may be about to go on, even better. And we have this incredible asset, which is essentially our surveillance infrastructure. So over time, airports have installed a lot of cameras, and those cameras aren't watched all the time, there are so many of them, they're watched by exceptions. So, somebody calls up and says, ‘there's a problem here,’ they switched to the camera or switched to a feed of cameras. Now at 30 frames a second times, 48 megapixels, times thousands of cameras, we have gotten a huge amount of footage and AI is now coming along and offering us a way to look at all of it all the time. And that's the vision of it. That's not how it works today. I think it's going to take quite a while for the technology to actually catch up. So we see a lot of solutions where someone says, I've got an algorithm that can detect a red suitcase, but if I say I want to be fluid in the way that I define my use cases, I want to come up with something next week and I want to put it into the system. And I don't want it to take six months to happen.

Brian
Right.

Ian
So what's this low-code, no-code way of being able to ask all of these cameras which were defined originally just purely for surveillance. We can now open this up to every function in the airport. Now, I think you have to put security and privacy guardrails around that, of course, but it's a game changer for us. And we've been out talking to the tech industry a lot about how do you do this, because you can do this for 50 cameras very easily, but how do you do it for thousands in real time and discover, you know, a lost bag, a missing child, the person who's fallen on the ground, a traffic congestion in a certain area, be able to tell you, hey, it looks like it's taking on average 22 minutes to get into terminal four at LAX and if you're coming to the airport, leave yourself a bit of extra time or right now it's really clear, so come on, and here's the best option for getting through the airport here.

Brian 
When you put it that way, there's I mean, there's so much opportunity, both kind of, I would say, outside of security, inside of security,  and then on the operational side. Right. So you know, outside of security and inside of security at the airport, helping people find their way, helping people figure out what is the best way through the airport. You kept calling it wayfinding, right? So as people find their way through the airport, can you talk a little bit about like, what's your vision for the airport of the future and what kind of experience would you like to see passengers have in your airports?

Ian
A, I would like them to be able to find the best way to get to wherever they want to get to in a way that they can consume it. So, they may not be an English speaker.

Brian
Yes.

Ian
Right? They may not find the signage color easy to navigate or whatever. There could be many other different reasons why somebody would want to, you know, have their tailored consumption of that wayfinding information. So, we see great potential with an augmented reality there. I think it's going to take a little bit of time technologically to get there. But the idea that you can essentially look through today, your phone, but in the future, maybe through glasses, you know, goggles and so on, and be able to essentially see the path in front of you in a way that you can understand it. And also narrowed to where you want to go, not giving you 400 options where you're trying to figure out, do I go left or I go right.

Brian
Well, that's fascinating because like, I didn't think of technology as increasing the accessibility for people. Yeah, it really does. It opens up the aperture of people who can access and who can enjoy all the things that the travel experience has to offer, right?

Ian
Yeah.

Brian
Then based on that, do you think there's more airports have to offer outside of just, you know, retail and concessions or, you know, from that traveler experiences as you get to know more about your customers, are there things that you can help provide maybe that will bring people in and allow them to enjoy that experience even more?

Ian
Two principle focus areas. One is getting into the airport, getting the bag dropped, you know, checked in, bag dropped, getting through the security, that's all the mass production process. So what you want to do there is help people get through it as fast as possible. Explain to them before they get there how to prepare for it. Just so move, because that's our time, if you like. Not their time. To them, that's a time liability if you like.

Brian
Okay.

Ian
You get them to the airside. They're in a place that, you know, they have limited scope to move around, as it were, within the terminal. They can stay within the terminal complex and so on if they're on the airside waiting to depart. And so now what are all the things you can do on the airside? And I think what we're seeing in malls, particularly, we've just done a little bit of internal research working with an external organization on this lately, but just for ourselves internally, that's showing that the traditional food, beverage and retail is not drawing people in the way it would have done in the past. And so apparently in the US particularly are opening things like mini casinos in the malls, child play facilities, not just a play area, but a facility with entertainment and everything else to both A, draw more people in and B increase the dwell time. And dwell time in the airport world is often is associated with increased revenue. So there's a value in that for us as well and being able to bring people in, but give them more than food, beverage and retail things to do. By the way, at a time when it works for everyone, right? We don't want them all coming at the peak time, but we also have a lot of troughs, in our day and being able to spread that demand, going back to my mass production point to get everybody through more quickly, so reduce that time liability for them and increase the time asset for them is really important.

Brian
I like thinking of that as a time asset, as a frequent traveler and as someone who has a lot of layover times in airports, I like thinking of that as an asset and maybe having more options in the future. You know, you brought up bags, right? So obviously, you know, bags and bag delivery and bag on time is something that every traveler worries about. As someone who gets a rush, every time I see my bag come off the carousel at the end

Ian
It’s a win.

Brian
It's a win and it's a good day. Talk a little bit about how do you see this technology helping with bags and helping with making sure that passengers and bags kind of remain together over time?

Ian
Yeah, it's still, you know, the lost luggage, missing luggage issue is still a big one for airlines and airports. Our assessment of it is predominantly an issue in transit. So point to point, you check your bag in here, you get off over there, you collect your bag, tends to work very well. The issue more becomes where you're transiting through one or more airports and that your bag is with you all the way. So there are a lot of challenges there that I think we  can still address technologically with both just optimizing routes. So making sure that those bags that have a very short connection time are being met off the incoming flight and being taken to the departing flight. I think there's a big mix going on in the background here as well with robotics and how that's going to work on the airfield with baggage handling and so on. So keep being more automated and be more predictable about the movement of bags I think is important, but also the detection to just airports and airlines doing more together. I mean, we do a lot already, but doing more together around the tracking of bag sharing information to track bags and also probably in the airport environment and airline environment, adding more infrastructure to help us track bags. So RFID tags has been a one on the agenda for years. Delta's done a lot of it here. The airport infrastructure and the airline infrastructures don't exist to do all the tracking that they still want to do.  So the question, I think, will be, you know, are we going to go up a game in our RFID tagging game as well at our upper level in that.

Brian
I think if nothing else, the next decade in this travelers journey is going to be amazing for us. The amount of technology, the amount of new opportunities. And as you said, things are going to come up that we don't even know about today.

Ian
Yeah.

Brian
So I'm really looking forward to it.

Ian
Me too.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) technologies presents a significant opportunity to enhance airport operational efficiency and passenger satisfaction. Improving the passenger experience extends beyond the functional aspects of travel to include the emotional and experiential dimensions. There is a clear opportunity to differentiate through personalized services and innovative offerings that cater to the diverse needs of today’s travelers.

In a discussion between Brian Prentice, partner in our Transportation and Services group, and Ian Law, the chief digital transformation officer at Los Angeles World Airports, the airport of the future will focus on the integration of technology in airport operations, enhancing the passenger experience, and streamlining passenger pain points like the baggage handling processes and terminal wayfinding.

Staying ahead of technological advancements and being open to innovation will be key for aviation leaders looking to navigate the future landscape of airport operations and passenger services effectively.

Ian Law
As an airport, as an airport operator, airlines, concessionaires, travelers, all want to know what's going on in the airport. They all want to know all the time what's going on and what may be about to go on.

Brian Prentice
I'm Brian Prentice, a partner at Oliver Wyman and our transportation group. I'm lucky enough this year to be at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. I'm joined today by Ian Law. What do you do for the Los Angeles World Airports?

Ian
There are two components to my role. One is the technology and digital component, which is just all about how we go about our work, how we digitize the guest experience at the airport, but also, the guest experience. So, it's got an IT and non-IT component, which is a guest experience piece as well, which is all about experience, innovation. And that's really fun because that's actually where the rubber hits the road as it were. You're out in the terminals, you see how people are experiencing the airports, you're trying to think of new ways to improve it and so on. And then sometimes it has a digital component and sometimes it doesn't.

Brian
Talking about airports of the future and one of the things that you talked about that was kind of fascinating to me was there's lots of video cameras and photo opportunities around the airport where I think you said 48 megapixels and two frames a second or something like that. It seems to me that that amount of information combined with some of these new AI, Gen AI technologies, provides a lot of opportunity for efficiency, for safety, for passenger experience. How are you thinking about using some of that technology in your airports?

Ian
First off, as an airport, as an airport operator, airlines, concessionaires, travelers, all want to know what's going on in the airport. They all want to know all the time what's going on and what may be about to go on, even better. And we have this incredible asset, which is essentially our surveillance infrastructure. So over time, airports have installed a lot of cameras, and those cameras aren't watched all the time, there are so many of them, they're watched by exceptions. So, somebody calls up and says, ‘there's a problem here,’ they switched to the camera or switched to a feed of cameras. Now at 30 frames a second times, 48 megapixels, times thousands of cameras, we have gotten a huge amount of footage and AI is now coming along and offering us a way to look at all of it all the time. And that's the vision of it. That's not how it works today. I think it's going to take quite a while for the technology to actually catch up. So we see a lot of solutions where someone says, I've got an algorithm that can detect a red suitcase, but if I say I want to be fluid in the way that I define my use cases, I want to come up with something next week and I want to put it into the system. And I don't want it to take six months to happen.

Brian
Right.

Ian
So what's this low-code, no-code way of being able to ask all of these cameras which were defined originally just purely for surveillance. We can now open this up to every function in the airport. Now, I think you have to put security and privacy guardrails around that, of course, but it's a game changer for us. And we've been out talking to the tech industry a lot about how do you do this, because you can do this for 50 cameras very easily, but how do you do it for thousands in real time and discover, you know, a lost bag, a missing child, the person who's fallen on the ground, a traffic congestion in a certain area, be able to tell you, hey, it looks like it's taking on average 22 minutes to get into terminal four at LAX and if you're coming to the airport, leave yourself a bit of extra time or right now it's really clear, so come on, and here's the best option for getting through the airport here.

Brian 
When you put it that way, there's I mean, there's so much opportunity, both kind of, I would say, outside of security, inside of security,  and then on the operational side. Right. So you know, outside of security and inside of security at the airport, helping people find their way, helping people figure out what is the best way through the airport. You kept calling it wayfinding, right? So as people find their way through the airport, can you talk a little bit about like, what's your vision for the airport of the future and what kind of experience would you like to see passengers have in your airports?

Ian
A, I would like them to be able to find the best way to get to wherever they want to get to in a way that they can consume it. So, they may not be an English speaker.

Brian
Yes.

Ian
Right? They may not find the signage color easy to navigate or whatever. There could be many other different reasons why somebody would want to, you know, have their tailored consumption of that wayfinding information. So, we see great potential with an augmented reality there. I think it's going to take a little bit of time technologically to get there. But the idea that you can essentially look through today, your phone, but in the future, maybe through glasses, you know, goggles and so on, and be able to essentially see the path in front of you in a way that you can understand it. And also narrowed to where you want to go, not giving you 400 options where you're trying to figure out, do I go left or I go right.

Brian
Well, that's fascinating because like, I didn't think of technology as increasing the accessibility for people. Yeah, it really does. It opens up the aperture of people who can access and who can enjoy all the things that the travel experience has to offer, right?

Ian
Yeah.

Brian
Then based on that, do you think there's more airports have to offer outside of just, you know, retail and concessions or, you know, from that traveler experiences as you get to know more about your customers, are there things that you can help provide maybe that will bring people in and allow them to enjoy that experience even more?

Ian
Two principle focus areas. One is getting into the airport, getting the bag dropped, you know, checked in, bag dropped, getting through the security, that's all the mass production process. So what you want to do there is help people get through it as fast as possible. Explain to them before they get there how to prepare for it. Just so move, because that's our time, if you like. Not their time. To them, that's a time liability if you like.

Brian
Okay.

Ian
You get them to the airside. They're in a place that, you know, they have limited scope to move around, as it were, within the terminal. They can stay within the terminal complex and so on if they're on the airside waiting to depart. And so now what are all the things you can do on the airside? And I think what we're seeing in malls, particularly, we've just done a little bit of internal research working with an external organization on this lately, but just for ourselves internally, that's showing that the traditional food, beverage and retail is not drawing people in the way it would have done in the past. And so apparently in the US particularly are opening things like mini casinos in the malls, child play facilities, not just a play area, but a facility with entertainment and everything else to both A, draw more people in and B increase the dwell time. And dwell time in the airport world is often is associated with increased revenue. So there's a value in that for us as well and being able to bring people in, but give them more than food, beverage and retail things to do. By the way, at a time when it works for everyone, right? We don't want them all coming at the peak time, but we also have a lot of troughs, in our day and being able to spread that demand, going back to my mass production point to get everybody through more quickly, so reduce that time liability for them and increase the time asset for them is really important.

Brian
I like thinking of that as a time asset, as a frequent traveler and as someone who has a lot of layover times in airports, I like thinking of that as an asset and maybe having more options in the future. You know, you brought up bags, right? So obviously, you know, bags and bag delivery and bag on time is something that every traveler worries about. As someone who gets a rush, every time I see my bag come off the carousel at the end

Ian
It’s a win.

Brian
It's a win and it's a good day. Talk a little bit about how do you see this technology helping with bags and helping with making sure that passengers and bags kind of remain together over time?

Ian
Yeah, it's still, you know, the lost luggage, missing luggage issue is still a big one for airlines and airports. Our assessment of it is predominantly an issue in transit. So point to point, you check your bag in here, you get off over there, you collect your bag, tends to work very well. The issue more becomes where you're transiting through one or more airports and that your bag is with you all the way. So there are a lot of challenges there that I think we  can still address technologically with both just optimizing routes. So making sure that those bags that have a very short connection time are being met off the incoming flight and being taken to the departing flight. I think there's a big mix going on in the background here as well with robotics and how that's going to work on the airfield with baggage handling and so on. So keep being more automated and be more predictable about the movement of bags I think is important, but also the detection to just airports and airlines doing more together. I mean, we do a lot already, but doing more together around the tracking of bag sharing information to track bags and also probably in the airport environment and airline environment, adding more infrastructure to help us track bags. So RFID tags has been a one on the agenda for years. Delta's done a lot of it here. The airport infrastructure and the airline infrastructures don't exist to do all the tracking that they still want to do.  So the question, I think, will be, you know, are we going to go up a game in our RFID tagging game as well at our upper level in that.

Brian
I think if nothing else, the next decade in this travelers journey is going to be amazing for us. The amount of technology, the amount of new opportunities. And as you said, things are going to come up that we don't even know about today.

Ian
Yeah.

Brian
So I'm really looking forward to it.

Ian
Me too.