Like many airports, airline agents at Wellington Airport used to access the different airline check-in applications they needed using on-site systems comprised of local servers, power-hungry workstations and costly network connections.
This traditional approach requires significant local IT support services including on-site technicians, and comes with substantial environmental and economic costs, while limiting innovation in passenger services.
That’s why Wellington Airport in New Zealand’s capital city has moved to Amadeus’ Airport Cloud Use Service (ACUS), simplifying how agents access airline systems.
Agents now offer a personalized service to passengers at check-in and boarding when flying on six airlines at Wellington including Qantas, Jetstar and Fiji Airways, simply by logging-on to ACUS to access any airline system they need.
The service will be scaled-up to support all airlines as their operations continue to resume following the lifting of travel restrictions.
The technology modernization means Wellington has retired 37 traditional workstations and replaced them with modern thin clients, which are ten times more energy efficient*.
Thin-client devices are simple, low-power, computers that provide an interface to the cloud, where computing tasks are undertaken by more efficient servers.
Hosting airline applications on state-of-the-art regional cloud infrastructure, rather than local servers within the airport’s own mini-data center, has removed the need for local maintenance whilst allowing the airport to completely remove ten of its own servers.
“With Amadeus’ Airport Cloud Use Service (ACUS), airline staff can now log on to access any airline system they need for check-in and boarding,” says Wellington Airport’s Head of Technology Jeremy Burrows.
“It means we’ve been able to retire 37 traditional workstations and ten servers, replacing them with modern thin clients which are ten times more energy efficient.
“It’s good for our bottom-line and for the planet to be greatly reducing our energy consumption like this.”
Burrows added:“Airline agents have seen an increase in speed and responsiveness with ACUS in comparison to the previous solution, and it’s easy for our team to maintain.
“It also provides greater flexibility to provide passenger services in different locations quickly and easily if needed.
“For example, if there was a natural disaster all we need is power and an internet connection to operate rather than bulky physical infrastructure.”
Sarah Samuel, SVP Airport and Airline Operations, APAC, Amadeus added:“Wellington Airport needed to move to a new system extremely quickly during a period when the world faced considerable uncertainty in global hardware supply chains.
“The tight deadline underlines how the cloud supports more flexible passenger services, as agents can deliver an outstanding service anywhere they have an internet connection.”
As a result of the newfound flexibility of running passenger services from the cloud, Wellington Airport is now considering the introduction of off-airport check-in and bag collection services.
In Wellington’s case, this would mean agents could be present at, for example, major sporting events like the 2023 FIA Women’s World Cup to check in passengers away from the terminal, reducing the potential for queues whilst improving the passenger experience.
