Keeping up its highly-beneficial support and commitment to the unbridled growth of the global airports industry and a leading technology and consulting company in the Arab world, emaratech, will be utilising Airport Show next month in Dubai to showcase its ever-expanding portfolio of innovative technology products to widen its clientele across the world.

Dubai is not only keeping up the global distinction of being the world’s top airport for international passengers, but also working its way to make its second airport, Al Maktoum International, as the world’s largest. Among the factors behind the success of Dubai in the exemplary management of airports has been its ability to process millions of passengers efficiently and safely with the help of companies like emaratech. Being a local company, emaratech has bridled itself to contribute immensely towards the vision of Dubai to be the smartest and most innovative city in the world, with aviation contributing as much as 32 per cent to its GDP by 2020.

With seamless passenger experience remaining high on its agenda, the Dubai-based company will be displaying its range of products including Smart Trolley and Intelligent Baggage Handling System at the world’s largest annual airport B2B exhibition.

Part of the investment profile of the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), emaratech will be joining the 3 day event as a Gold sponsor held at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC) on 7-9 May. Occupying three halls, the 18^th edition of the annual gathering is expected to see strong presence of 350 exhibitors from 90 countries with 7,500 attendees.

Thani Al Zaffin, director general and board member of emaratech, remarked: “We remain firm on our march towards a hard-to-stop growth path through a wide bouquet of projects which includes programs to ensure seamless passenger movements at Dubai International which handled last year close to 90 million passengers, continuing its fourth year run as the world’s top airport for international travelers.”

The company, as the GDRFA technology partner, completed the installation of multimodal biometric Smart Gates which can identify a traveller by either their passport, Emirates ID, e-gate card or a QR barcode generated via a smartphone app. A total 127 smart gates will be available across all the terminals of Dubai Airports, reducing average transaction times from minutes to under 10-15 seconds.

The company will display Smart Trolley and Intelligent Baggage Handling System at Airport Show this May, which offers improved security at lower cost, better flow and increased revenue and efficiency in airports’ commercial areas. The trolley allows passengers to power their personal devices and acts as a real-time way finding device in the airport via an interactive 3D-map.

For flight and gate information, the device updates the information on a real-time basis and keeps the passengers updated at all times. The trolley has a multiple basket platform with different storage room designs and sizes which allows the individual airport to choose the exact type and shape of basket that suits them. Intelligent Baggage Handling System is the new system for baggage handling which reduces manual handling by 99 percent.

Another of its Seamless Passenger Experience project is Smart Corridor (SC). This is a smart passage used by passengers to ease and speed travelling process for them by enabling the passenger to enter the corridor in a sequence way where their IRIS will be captured on the fly without the need to present any travel document or stand for Iris capture. This concept does not need officer intervention, no travel document is required and passengers are checked and notified before arriving to airport. It is applicable only for selected passenger. Smart Corridor will be placed in T3 Departure.

The Smart Corridor technology can operate passenger faster, more accurately, and under a greater range of distances at immigration zone at the airport. Because of capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the authorities can detect subject identities that were previously not possible, allowing for recognition while the individual is moving, wearing sunglasses or contacts, and even running – accurately and quickly. The products has dependency on iris recognition biometrics.

Reed Exhibitions Middle East will be organising Airport Show under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Chairman of Dubai Airports and Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Airline and Group. The show will also feature four co-located events this year, including Air Traffic Control (ATC) Forum, Airport Security Middle East, Global Airport Leaders’ Forum (GALF) and Women in Aviation.

Daniyal Qureshi, group exhibition director at Reed Exhibitions Middle East, said: “This year’s event will showcase a number of ground breaking innovations that will transform the way we travel through airports in the future. Passengers are becoming more demanding each year and Dubai has been a model city to roll out new technologies and ideas. We are honoured to have emaratech as our Gold Partner and are confident visitors will be thrilled at the exciting innovations on display at their booth”.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) expects 7.2 billion passengers to travel by air in 2035, a near doubling of the present day’s 3.8 billion level. The Middle East region is project to handle 400 million air passengers by 2020, with the GCC’s share being 250 million. By 2020, Dubai International is estimated to receive 100 million passengers.