Revolutionary Airport Design Might Make City Bus Obsolete
Jeff Edwards October 26, 2016
DENVER, CO - NOVEMBER 26: Security lines at Denver International Airport are long but moving fast, November 26, 2014. The airport was busy with thanksgiving travelers. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Architect Radu Gidei envisions a new kind of airport where passengers just show up and board their flights with baggage and security concerns handled elsewhere.
This week, Business Insider reported on a novel idea that may someday make heading to the airport much less of a hassle. Twenty-seven-year-old architect Radu Gidei re-imagined what an airport means to passengers and designed a new type of facility that he says could virtually eliminate nearly everything flyers dislike about catching a flight.
“They’re just getting bigger and bigger,” Gidei told Business Insider’s Talia Lakritz. ”The problem with having everything under one roof is that if anything within that system fails, everything falls apart and you get a huge backlog. I don’t think it’s a well-designed system.”
Gidei, who first conceived his “airport of the future” designs as part of a graduate school project, says the buildings themselves are not the problem. Instead, he believes, airports should focus on the business of transporting passengers and their belongings from one destination to another and leave security, ticketing and check-in to other off-site entities.
“Maybe you do security whilst on the train, and you drop your bags before you even get to the train station,” Gidei explained. “Everything is done on your journey towards that airplane, not airport, so by the time you get to the airplane all you have to do is actually walk on board. It’s not something that you need to invent a teleportation device to implement. This can be done today, with technology today. It’s not that far out, it’s just a rethinking of how the system works.”
Gidei admits that it’s a long shot that his unique airport concept will become a reality anytime in the near future. He points out that many of the hassles faced at the airport are also a huge source of revenue. It seems clear that today’s mega-airports will not easily give up on profits from parking and concessions that all thrive on passengers spending more time at the facilities.
The visionary young architect says that he believes things are slowly headed in the right direction. He points to innovations like “in-town baggage service” for passengers headed to Hong Kong International Airport (HKG) as a positive omen.
[Photo: Andy Cross Denver Post/Getty Images]
a bit of history on how this was done years ago in London. https://rbkclocalstudies.wordpress.com/2013/06/06/forgotten-buildings-the-west-london-air-terminal/
While the idea is not new, I like the convenience of in town check-in and baggage drop off. It seems to work well IMO in HK.
Things that can be handled offsite already are (for instance, online ticketing and check-in), but how exactly would security on a train enroute to the airport work? The point of a "secure area" is that there are a limited number of controlled entry points, and public transit isn't the only way to get to the airport. He says this system will never be implemented because it disrupts established revenue streams, but I say it's because it's completely impractical.
Lots of moving parts, coordination, and off-site personnel involved with an effort like this. Call me skeptical. Very skeptical. I for one would never drop my bags anywhere but directly with the airline at the airport.
In-town check-in in Hong Kong is hardly an innovation. There was an in-town check-in service in Hong Kong donkeys' years ago, before HKIA even opened if I recall correctly. I used to use in-town check-in in London Paddington decades ago. There used to be in-town check-in in Manila as well.