AIRPORT WORLD 2026, ISSUE 03
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Airport Profile: Hong Kong (HKG)
Special Report: Hotels & Sleep Pods
Plus: IT Innovation; Airport Design; Cleaning Robots & Business Exchange
Summer madness
Editor, Joe Bates, reflects on the busy summer months for air travel and the ‘passenger facilitation’ theme of this issue.
Airports in the Northern Hemisphere are now enjoying their busiest season of the year as hundreds of millions of people across the globe jet off on their summer holidays.
In the UK alone it is predicted that 30 million passengers will board outbound flights from one of the country’s airports in July and August.
While in the US, the TSA has reported that it screened a record-breaking 18.7 million travellers over the extended Fourth of July holiday period, and it expects a typically hectic summer of air travel.
Such huge numbers inevitably put extra strain on airport facilities and staff as they struggle to cope with demand during these crazily busy few months.
New processes and procedures often don’t help matters, like the roll-out of the EU’s digital Entry-Exit System (EES) currently causing severe bottlenecks at airports across the continent.
Indeed, the need for non-EU travellers to register their fingerprints and a photo via standalone kiosks on arrival has led to wait times at some airports taking hours instead of minutes.
You can read more about what airports can learn from the EES experience and how they can better prepare for future operational challenges in the next issue of Airport World.
I have always thought of the great getaway and all the frenzied activity around it, including the battle for a cab at the airport or trying to find a table in a crowded restaurant, as part and parcel of the madness of summer travel.
It is nothing new, of course, but undoubtedly it gets more difficult to manage each year as passenger numbers grow and existing facilities near their capacity.
Fortunately, airports are only too aware of what the summer peak period involves, and many prepare for it months in advance. This could involve anything from drafting plans to bring in extra staff and ensuring they make maximise use of their facilities to opening new infrastructure.
Arguably, this is when passenger facilitation needs to be at its best to optimise passenger journeys through the airport and provide visitors with the services and facilities they need, to make the airport experience a good one.
As you would expect in this ‘passenger facilitation’ themed issue of your favourite airport magazine, we cover a host of ways airports are enhancing the airport experience ranging from embracing new technology to sleeping accommodation at airports.
Cracking the passenger code; retail/F&B innovation; hotels and sleep pods; agentic AI; Frankfurt Airport’s dynamic new Terminal 3; and Saudi Arabia’s airport vision are addressed in the themed section of the magazine.
Elsewhere in the issue we have features about planning for the unexpected; Queen Alia’s Smart Cleaning System and robotic cleaning technology; and the potential impact of the decision to abolish upward-only rent on the non-aeronautical revenue of UK airports.
Our main airport feature is on ever ambitious Hong Kong International Airport, where we discover more about its ongoing growth and development.
If that’s not enough we also have articles about the design and construction of Bhutan’s Gelephu International Airport; sustainability; and the recent ‘Making AI Work in Airports’ webinar hosted by the Egremont Group in partnership with Airport World.
We round the issue out with our usual ‘people matters’ column and airport supplier news and features on the ‘business exchange’ pages.
