27 March, 2019: Manchester Airports Group (MAG) has chosen SITA to implement further passenger self-service across the group’s three main airports. According to the five-year agreement, SITA will provide new check-in, self-bag drop and boarding points across Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports.
A revised check-in strategy has been developed as part of MAG’s transformation programmes at each airport which focus on delivering an enhanced customer experience and efficient use of airport capacity through the option of greater automated or self-service passenger processing.
SITA will provide over 660 staffed and self-service common-use points at check-in, transfer and boarding across all three airports. SITA will significantly increase staffed and self-service check-in kiosks at Manchester Airport which is the group’s busiest airport and will also introduce SITA’s self-bag drop in Terminals 1 and 3, where passengers can check in their own bags in less than a minute.
Nicholas Woods, CIO of MAG said, “Our passenger numbers continue to grow rapidly across our three airports. At the same time, our passengers want to spend as little time completing the travel steps such as check-in, bag drop and boarding. We recognise that better technology allows us to process more passengers as well as reduce queues and SITA have provided a solution to deliver on both requirements.”
Previously, SITA was also selected to carry out a significant upgrade to Manchester Airport’s baggage reconciliation systems which allowed the airport to better track bags at key points across the journey.
According to the agreement, SITA will also take care of the new passenger and baggage processing systems.