Queues at airport check-in gates could be a thing of the past
after Air New Zealand revealed a $30 million revamp of its domestic
terminals.
The national carrier announced changes to its check-in procedures
for domestic flights around the country, beginning in Auckland.
Stephen Jones, Air NZ general manager, says the changes are 'revolutionary'.
From next week Air New Zealand will do away with the old check-in counters and introduce do-it-yourself kiosks, where passengers can print off their own bag tags and take their luggage to the bag drop themselves.
Travellers boarding passes can be sent to them via mobile in order to get people through the airport faster.
Julia Raue, Air NZ chief information officer, says all that passengers need to do is go up to the kiosk, place the mobile phone displaying the barcode under the light, and that registers them.
Frequent flyers will get tiny radio frequency identification tags.
The RFID tag lets passengers without any baggage go straight to the boarding gate, where they can scan the tag, and receive a gate stub which confirms that they have boarded the flight.
Air New Zealand predicts 40-60% less time will be spent in queues as a result.
"That should be shrunk down to about a minute, a minute and a half of kiosk experience, tag your own bag and drop it off," says Jones.
But Air New Zealand's short haul manager says it won't mean job losses for front line staff.
"This is all about, for us, getting our staff out from behind the counters and working closely with our customers," says Bruce Parton.
Do-it-yourself kiosks will also be introduced in Air New Zealand's domestic terminals in Wellington and Christchurch by the end of the year.
There is a back-up plan to manually process passengers, after the technical problems that Heathrow's new terminal faced early this year, but Air NZ says it has learnt from that mistake.
"We won't be turning this on if we're not absolutely certain that it'll work well," says Parton.
All going well, New Zealand's the three main centres will be up and running within six weeks.
