How Event-Driven Architecture will Drive Growth for Airports in the Post-Pandemic Era

It’s no secret that the aviation industry was dealt a major blow due to the pandemic — and it still has a long path to recovery ahead. Global flight frequency dropped by 43.5% from January 2020 to January 2021, and airlines lost $92.3 billion in revenue in Q4 of 2020.

To recover from such a dramatic impact, airports need to take bold, decisive action. Digital transformation could help airports survive the after-effects of the pandemic and thrive once again in the near future. It is predicted that Covid-19 will accelerate digitization projects in airports, especially those related to passenger experience and self-service. Airports that don’t adopt modern solutions risk post-pandemic stagnation and poor customer experience (CX).

Event streaming and management technologies underpin and bolster great airport CX because they help dispel monolithic silos, integrate systems, and provide for real-time data flow. By championing these technologies, airport technology leaders can become more operationally resilient and efficient, provide better CX, and adapt to the needs of the post-pandemic world.

What is Event Streaming and Management?

Before exploring the benefits for airports, let’s explain what event streaming and event-driven architecture actually are. Event streaming has been used in capital markets and trading for years, and it is now getting increasingly popular as more and more enterprises have more and more “events” they need to securely and rapidly distribute.

Events can essentially be described as occurrences. From a flight taking off to a passenger checking in, from a boarding pass scan to a duty-free purchase—all of these are events. Event streaming, when part of an event portal, enables teams across departments and even across the world from each other to share, visualize, and ultimately respond to those events as they happen. This continuous real-time streaming of events, when combined with contextual intelligence, can create better customer experiences.

Event-driven architecture refers to the software design pattern in which decoupled applications can asynchronously publish and subscribe to these events via an event broker (modern messaging-oriented middleware). The key benefits of event-driven architecture for modern applications and microservices are improved scalability, agility, and resilience. Event-driven architecture creates more responsive applications, IoT backbones, and thriving artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies.

Driving Experience for Leisure and Business Travelers

International arrivals dropped by a staggering 72% over the first ten months of 2020. This means that there are hundreds of millions of travelers patiently waiting to go on vacation, visit family and friends, or take an important business trip, free of the stress of the pandemic. As these passengers emerge again in their droves, airports must be ready to provide the best experience possible.

An event-driven design system also plays a critical role here as it provides the underlying structure to enable real-time updates on parking availability, security wait time, or shuttle bus schedules via digital beacons and IoT sensors located throughout the airport.

Flow monitoring solutions, like what was recently introduced in Nice Côte d’Azur Airport, provide real-time data to airport workers to help control crowding at typical bottleneck locations, such as check-in desks, security lines, and boarding gates. This helps passengers avoid long lines at any given stage and gives them more opportunities to enjoy airport entertainment options like stores and restaurants.

Boarding pass scan events correlated with gate clearance events can even trigger duty-free discounts for airline members and airport loyalty programs, all in real-time, allowing airports to reward their most loyal passengers and offer a truly individualized experience.

The New Normal of Traveling, Post-Covid-19

Although early indicators show positive signs that the aviation sector will recover passenger numbers, it certainly won’t be a case of business-as-usual. 

Airports will now have to manage various new checks on top of all the usual events created by their systems. These will include vaccination record checks, swab checks, Covid-19 test results, and events created by contact tracing applications. The ability to correlate all of these events to mitigate the chance of contagion will be paramount in 2021 and beyond.

Boarding systems, check-in systems, healthcare systems, security systems, and experience systems must all be integrated in real-time. Given all these occurrences are events, an event-driven architecture is an unavoidable element of this digital architecture. Airports without this technology will not be able to handle the load.

Forming Part of the Wider Ecosystem

As other areas of aviation embrace digitization, airports will be forced to do the same to keep up. For example, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) uses an event streaming and management platform to collect and distribute real-time data to power their NextGen Weather Systems. System-wide Information Management (SWIM), a global air traffic management initiative that harmonizes the exchange of aeronautical, weather, and flight information for all airspace users and stakeholders, uses Solace’s platform as its backbone for air traffic information.

This allows airlines to optimize airspace and helps airlines operate more efficiently. Ground operations in airports that are interacting with this kind of advanced technology must be able to respond with equally real-time systems. The need to form part of a wider developing ecosystem also applies to rapidly-advancing supply chains and cargo systems that were forced to modernize due to the pandemic.

How to Approach Digital Transformation 

Getting started with event streaming and management shouldn’t be an intimidating mountain to climb for airports. One example of an airport that has embraced event-driven architecture to improve operational efficiency and enhance passenger services is Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA). HKIA is using an Internet of Things (IoT) platform and a secure messaging backbone to support initiatives like real-time equipment location tracking and predictive maintenance on assets and buildings for different airport business units. Airports should look to this example to see the successful unification of systems via event streaming.

At the beginning of the event-driven journey, airport leaders should opt to take one project that’s a real-time candidate and make it event-driven, such as boarding pass scanning. They can then continue to build on their event catalog and use that to power operations. As these foundations expand, leaders should consider sourcing a technology partner that can put an event mesh in place.

Looking ahead, there’s no doubt that event-driven architecture will become commonplace in airports across the world in the coming years. It is those forward-thinking airport leaders that begin their event-driven architecture journey now, seeing airports as mini smart cities, that will be best positioned to reap the most benefit in 2021 and beyond.

Sumeet Puri is Solace’s Chief Technology Officer. His expertise includes architecting large-scale enterprise systems in various domains, including trading platforms, core banking, telecommunications, supply chain, machine to machine track and trace, and more recently in spaces related to big data, mobility, IoT, and analytics.