Pearson Airport in Mississauga wins award for how it reduced passenger lineups

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Published March 25, 2022 at 2:18 pm

pearson airport

Pearson Airport in Mississauga has won a North America-wide award for its innovative approach to one of travellers’ biggest pet peeves–the dreaded lineup inside airport terminals.

The airport was recognized with a 2022 Airport Business Projects of the Year award in the Technology category for its Airport Passenger Queue System (PQS).

The PQS, introduced as a two-month pilot program last April in Terminal 3, wound up reducing long lineups by providing passengers with more timely boarding information via a QR code on their phones.

Given the pilot’s success, officials with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), which runs Pearson, say they’ll seek to implement the system on a wider scale at the airport in the near future.

Pierre Lanthier, director of IT strategy and innovation for the GTAA, said that by giving passengers more timely boarding information, the hope was to alleviate the nervous tension that caused them to form a long line as soon as they heard a boarding announcement.

With information in hand, passengers didn’t need to swarm the gate to hear announcements on the PA or see the overhead gate screen, the GTAA said.

Instead of lining up or crowding the gate area, they were able to sit nearby, walk around or do some shopping inside the terminal.

Essentially, the GTAA says, the system provided an enhanced, efficient and safe boarding experience for passengers.

“Our primary concern was the space required to properly distance passengers,” noted Lanthier, referring to the needs brought about by COVID-19 measures.

So, the GTAA collaborated with its strategic IT partner, Wipro Limited, to create a cloud-based PQS designed to improve the boarding experience. In doing so, they discovered the system had other benefits as well.

Six airport projects across Canada and the United States were recognized by Airport Business, the leading North American publication focused on operations and technology innovation in aviation.

The recognition program showcases some of the major improvements that airports are undertaking and the visionary designers, planners and engineers making them a reality, the GTAA says.

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