The Future of Travel column is a monthly series exploring the innovations and bold ideas moving travel forward.
“You’re treated like cattle.” It’s one of the most oft-repeated refrains that passenger experience designer Jo Rowan has heard in dozens of interviews about the current state of airport accessibility. Through her research on the many issues that plague disabled travelers, she’s confirmed many of their frustrations: the current model isn’t working that well for the roughly 1 in 6 people who have some form of disability.
Alongside her colleagues at the London-based design firm PriestmanGoode, which is also behind Air4All, a concept designed to allow travelers to fly in their own wheelchairs, she set out to create solutions for part of this large but overlooked segment—specifically, travelers who require some help with mobility, which includes full-time wheelchair users as well as a growing population of older travelers.
These travelers often find airports “inhumane” places, she says, where they’re faced with insufficient assistance services; are mistakenly abandoned by staff at the wrong gates or at baggage claim; and are even stranded in the airline’s wheelchairs on the tarmac, left to watch their flight take off without them. “They’re either avoiding flying or they’re dealing with the substandard airport experience,” says Rowan. And though the disability rights movement has for years been ringing these alarms, the industry simply hasn’t “fully understood the mindset of the people who actually use [mobility support services],” she says.
Earlier this year at the Aviation X Lab Moonshoot competition in Dubai, PriestmanGoode joined UK-based companies Centaur Robotics and Naurt to unveil a prototype for a self-driving personal vehicle called the Geo. Rowan estimates that within two years, you could see Geos in airports, where they would enable travelers with reduced mobility to navigate terminals on their own.
The Geo is only one of the emerging technologies and designs promising to transform airports. The disability rights advocates, architects, and designers at the forefront of these issues say a new range of accessibility and inclusivity innovations have the potential to make airports less stressful—and maybe even more pleasant—places for most travelers.
But meaningful changes require a fundamental shift in passenger experience that views marginalized travelers—including people with disabilities, neurodivergent travelers, as well as trans and gender-expansive communities—as more than afterthoughts.
The rush to expand airports poses accessibility challenges
Air passenger numbers are projected to set new records in coming years, and airports are hastening to keep up. Around the world, major airport construction and renovation projects are underway; those in the US are driven in part by major investments like the nearly $1 billion funding awarded to 99 airports by the U.S. Department of Transportation earlier this year.
Inclusive design is the buzzy term du jour. Yet while many airports are starting to take inclusivity more seriously, it's still “not seriously enough,” says Laurel Van Horn, director of programs at Open Doors Organization, a non-profit aiming to make travel more accessible to people with disabilities.
“My immediate concern is that current investments in infrastructure being made across the country and designed to serve the public for the next 50 years will not adequately meet current needs for accessibility, let alone future ones,” she says.
One big barrier is the status quo approach that focuses primarily on achieving compliance with various regulations, which are often seen as bare minimum in the disability rights movement. In the US, for example, there’s a complex web of responsibilities, which can lead to disjointed passenger experience design. In U.S. airports, under the Air Carrier Access Act, individual airlines are responsible for getting passengers through the airports and onto the plane; airports themselves are charged only with facility accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Consequently, “Airports typically don’t even have data on how many passengers with disabilities travel through their terminals or require assistance,” Van Horn says.
To make meaningful progress toward meeting the needs of people with disabilities, the industry needs to move beyond achieving minimum regulatory compliance, says Roberto Castiglioni, founder of advocacy group Reduced Mobility Rights. “The aviation industry must transition from the existing patronizing model of assistance and focus on creating an environment that encourages and supports independence.” That’s where designers are working with advocates to go beyond merely ticking boxes.
Airports as testing grounds for inclusivity innovations
Airports can be influential “pilot locations for new technologies and systems that can be applied in other environments,” says Regine Weston, a fellow in aviation at design and engineering firm Arup, which consults on many airport development projects, from Jewel Changi Airport in Singapore to Dubai International Airport.
Most recently, airports have become an important testing ground for technologies aimed at assisting deaf people as well as travelers with reduced hearing. It’s a problem, for instance, that most pivotal flight updates are often only announced over loudspeakers at the departure gates. To remedy that, Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport recently achieved what Van Horn calls a “breakthrough in accessibility” by becoming the first airport in the country to pilot talk-to-text technology at several of its departure gates—using live artificial intelligence transcription to display on nearby screens what gate announcers say in real time. And other airports such as Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are “actively working” to integrate talk-to-text technology, according to Heather T.S. Karch at the Port of Seattle.
MSP also is one of several US airports that stand out for its continued expansion of hearing loops; the unique sound system broadcasts local announcements from throughout most of the departure areas directly to passengers’ hearing aids.
Trials and prototypes of emerging innovations in autonomous personal vehicles like PriestmanGoode’s Geo, DAAV, and Whill Autonomous Service are also a growing area of focus. While each solution varies in its design, these self-driving mobility services aim to use technologies like artificial intelligence and geolocation to help passengers throughout the terminal and toward their gate—and also opening up access to the shops and restaurants that conventional wheelchair mobility services may bypass.
“At some airports, a shortage of staff has led to up to three [passengers in] wheelchairs pushed simultaneously by a single individual,” says Weston, who adds that new solutions like the Geo have the potential to “provide autonomy for passengers and reduce the long and often stressful time of waiting for an operations staff person.” Tokyo’s Narita International Airport and Canada’s Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport are two of the airports to launch self-driving vehicles in the past year.
Building a new terminal around universal design principles
Individual technologies, of course, are only useful if they’re holistically incorporated into an airport’s overall terminal design, says Kelly Bacon, principal and global practice lead at AECOM, a leading Dallas-based infrastructure consulting firm. “Simply building new solutions is not enough,” Bacon says. “These solutions need to be thoughtful, intentional, and distributed throughout to be effective.”
For this reason, Van Horn calls on airports that are hiring architects and engineers for major expansion projects to ensure that “each design team has a dedicated member focusing just on universal design.”
Coined by pioneering accessibility-focused architect Ronald Mace, universal design refers to a comprehensive approach to building innovative spaces that are as inclusive as possible of everyone regardless of disability, age, neurodivergence, and other factors. And one major airport project shows what some of these principles look like in action.
The redevelopment of Kansas City International Airport, which opened this February, began with an official city resolution calling for the terminal to become “the most accessible in the world.” To answer that brief, architects at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill consulted a diverse cohort of advocacy and community groups like The Whole Person, Variety KC, and Dementia Friendly KC.
The early results at the new MCI terminal show promise: Every check-in and information desk is at wheelchair accessible heights. All-gender restrooms are more inclusive not only of trans and gender-expansive travelers, but people with disabilities who travel with caregivers. Universal changing tables accommodate children and adults. For neurodivergent travelers, a sensory room creates a calming space and a multimedia travel simulation room helps them prepare for every phase of the journey from security to even boarding a retired Airbus plane. Travelers with service animals will find relief areas throughout.
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Emerging technologies could make security less intrusive
One less obvious way designers can get deeper insights into where the status quo is failing travelers: monitoring their stress levels. “Arup has been doing research into the emotional responses of passengers as they traverse the airport system, using feedback from modified smart watches,” explains Weston. Her team tracks indicators like heart rate and breathing patterns. And for many, anxieties tend to peak going through passport and security checks, especially for certain groups such as neurodivergent travelers.
Weston says some recent tweaks have improved elements of the experience such as virtual queueing, launched last year at airports including John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and Berlin Brandenburg Airport, allowing travelers to pre-book security slots. “Knowing what to expect goes a long way towards reducing stress.”
But more science-fiction-seeming technologies are on the horizon, which could fundamentally transform the flying experience. Take crowded passport checks, at best an irritation for most travelers and far more concerning for trans and non-binary travelers—largely due to the many difficulties in correcting documentation and the safety risks of being outed. Traditional passport checks could eventually be swapped for remotely scanning travelers’ heartbeats, say experts.
“Each person has a unique heartbeat and it’s an aspect of their personhood that cannot be faked,” says Melissa Sterry, a leading design scientist and systems theorist. “Whereas as of old, reading an individual’s heartbeat required the likes of stethoscopes, today remote sensing technology enables heartbeats to be read at a distance.” Prototypes can already identify someone from more than 200 yards away. While not without their own concerns, they could replace traditional passport checks as we know it.
It’s one example of how “emerging innovations in sensing, actuation, and processing are set to make many aspects of airport security less intrusive,” says Sterry.
As with many of the innovations that can make airports of the future more inclusive places, much of the technology the industry needs is already out there and the design solutions exist in some form. “In that sense, to quote William Gibson, ‘the future is already here,” she recites, “it’s just not evenly distributed.’”