Pictures of the Future    Fall 2006

Soaring Sales

Airplanes and airports are two of today’s fastest-growing sectors. With passenger safety and comfort high on the list of top priorities, Siemens is helping to drive this boom with tailor-made solutions for major airports worldwide.

Business is booming in the airline industry. The world’s carriers now transport 1.6 billion passengers annually. And experts, including analysts at Frost & Sullivan, are forecasting that this figure will rise to 2.3 billion by 2010—an increase of more than 40 %. As a result, many of the world’s largest air traffic regions are faced with the need to modernize and expand their major airports on a practically continuous basis.

And that’s where Siemens comes in. As the world’s only company with the know-how to completely equip an airport, Siemens supplies a host of products and services in this sector, including conveyor systems to handle baggage and freight, security systems for passengers and their luggage, solutions for automating building services and energy management, systems for airfield lighting and road-traffic management, IT and telecommunications solutions, supervision of service fleets, and project management integration of these areas. Services covering operation and maintenance over an airport’s full lifecycle complete the portfolio.

Our tour of the world’s airports begins in Seoul, South Korea, where the gently sweeping, elegantly futuristic buildings of Incheon Airport are located on an island in the Yellow Sea.

Open since 2001, Incheon is already being expanded in order to accommodate 44 million passengers a year. The array of new technology used in the project will help boost efficiency and ensure even greater comfort for travelers. For the first time, Siemens is installing a new type of baggage-handling system that employs the "double-tray principle." This system transports baggage at high speed along a 900-m tunnel connecting the main building with the new terminal. Thanks to the trays, which come in a range of sizes, suitcase-type luggage as well as bulky items can be transported on the same conveyor. To ensure that this innovative system is up to all the challenges involved, the control technology is currently being subjected to rigorous testing at the Siemens Airport Center in Fürth, Germany (Pictures of the Future, Spring 2006,  Siemens Airport Center).

Parallel Projects. Only a 90- minute flight from Incheon, Siemens experts are busy expanding Beijing Airport, which is now gearing up for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Because Siemens will be able to supply one of the world’s most modern baggage-handling systems by the end of 2007, the company was awarded the contract in the face of very formidable competition.

"Incheon and Beijing are two massive projects that must be completed at the same time," says Günter Menden, Corporate Department Head of Siemens Airport Logistics. "And we won’t be getting any extensions. The opening ceremony of the Games is the deadline we’re all working toward." When completed, Terminal 3 will increase Beijing Airport’s annual capacity from 28 million to 60 million passengers.

China is the world’s largest growth market for new airports. Yet only 0.1 % of the country’s population travels on an international flight at least once a year. In the U.S., that figure is 13 %. In order to meet this tremendous pent-up demand, the Chinese government now intends to build airports in all of the 127 cities on its territory that have more than one million inhabitants. "Most of these airports will be for domestic flights only," explains Menden. "We’re currently working out specifications for this type of small to medium-sized airport, so that we can then offer an off-the-peg solution, as it were, at a fixed price."

Moving further south to Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur Airport serves more than 23 million passengers a year. The country’s Ministry of Transport has asked Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services (I&S) to supply a baggage-handling system that will connect the satellite terminal at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) with the express rail-link station in the main terminal. This will make conveyance up to five times faster than it is now. Benefitting most from faster and more efficient service will be passengers traveling to the airport by train from the central station. In the future, they will be able to check their luggage in downtown at Kuala Lumpur. And matters could be even further simplified by equipping each piece of luggage with an RFID tag containing all the requisite information regarding the owner, destination and airline. "It’s technically feasible but still too expensive to be a viable option," explains Menden. With such a system, passengers could even check in their baggage at a hotel on the morning of departure and then have it automatically forwarded to the next hotel that evening.

From Kuala Lumpur, our journey progresses farther west, via a stopover in India, home to 1.2 billion people. "Indian airports have a lot of catching up to do from a Western point of view," says Menden. Yet the public sector wants to improve infrastructure—and it’s prepared to adopt new approaches in the process. Bangalore, for example, is building a new airport in a public-private partnership involving the national government and the state of Karnataka, on the one hand, and a joint venture between private investors and Siemens Project Ventures (SPV) as the major partner, on the other ( India).

"The people of the region have been waiting a long time for this," explains Dr. Wolfgang Bischoff, head of SPV. "It’s our first airport project—so far we’ve invested in power plants and hospitals—but we’re confident the new airport will serve as a model for more public-private partnerships in India," he adds. Scheduled to open in 2008, the airport is designed to handle 6.7 million passengers a year and cost about $450 million. Financing talks kicked off back in 1999. "It took a lot of patience," Bischoff admits. For example, a change of government in India set the project back. Yet perseverance has paid off, with I&S and Siemens Ltd. India now contracted to supply all the technical equipment. Siemens holds a 40 % equity stake in the new airport, with another 13 % belonging to the national and state governments. The rest is in the hands of private investors.

Desert Hub. We’re now approaching the Middle East, where several countries are busy building enormous hotel and leisure complexes designed to turn the desert into an attractive vacation destination. And these resorts can only be reached by air. That’s why Dubai is expanding its airport’s annual capacity from 25 million to 70 million passengers. Siemens is supplying a cargo center with a capacity of 1.2 mill. t a year, plus an automatic baggage-handling system with a total length of 90 km—the largest in the world. The Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) in the United Arab Emirates has been putting its faith in Siemens know-how for years. Siemens supplied the baggage-handling system for Terminal 1, for example, as well as complete facility automation for large parts of the airport. Forecasts suggest that fairly soon after its completion, the expansion will be insufficient to handle the increased passenger load, so work already started back in 2005 to build an even bigger airport, 40 km away in Jebel Ali. Featuring six parallel landing strips, this gigantic airport and logistics complex will be unlike anything else in the world.

Before then, roughly 12,000 athletes will be heading to Qatar at the end of this year to take part in the 15th Asia Games. Including officials, personnel and spectators, the capital city Doha will have to cope with an onslaught of well over 50,000 people, enough to overload the airport. Once again, Siemens was able to help because it is the only company that can supply a complete, temporary facility—the CapacityPlus terminal. "It’s something we first did for the 2004 European Soccer Championships in Lisbon," explains Menden. The facility supplied by I&S consists of a 100 × 80-m² tent, featuring a traditional Arabic design with lots of small flags and pennants. Inside are departure and arrival zones, a check-in desk, a baggage-handling system and an electronic screening system for passengers. In addition, Siemens is including a baggage X-ray system, a flight-information system, air conditioning, washrooms and an emergency power supply. "We plan to build the terminal in six months and operate it for two months," says Menden. "It’s ideal not only for mega-events, but also as an interim solution during renovation work."

Back in European airspace, all the major airport projects have now been completed. At the start of the year, Madrid Airport opened its brand-new Terminal 4, which boasts the largest baggage-handling system in Europe—again from Siemens. "European airports today are primarily interested in optimizing their baggage and freight handling," explains Menden. One reason is that they want to cut the minimum connecting time, the time it takes to shift transit passengers and their luggage to a connecting flight. This is a key factor in the airlines’ profitability calculations. At the same time, the major airports are also gearing up for the arrival of the new high-capacity Airbus A380.

                                                     Top 20 Airports

In the U.S., security remains the key issue. Siemens is already providing service and maintenance for security systems at a total of 430 American airports, as well as equipment for screening passengers and baggage. What’s more, to avoid long waits, many airports in the U.S. are now upgrading their baggage-handling systems and fitting them with such screening equipment.

Siemens is also developing a new energy-saving program for Detroit Airport. As long ago as 2002, a similar project yielded millions of dollars in savings. And now the new air terminal in Detroit—for which Siemens is the main contractor—is likewise being built according to strict energy-saving principles. Meanwhile, Indianapolis has gone one step farther and is planning to become the first airport in the United States to gain LEED certification (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a voluntary U.S. standard awarded to "Green Buildings" (Building Automation). The airport is being completely rebuilt with a terminal featuring 40 gates, a tower and its own highway link. Siemens is also equipping one baggage-handling system with a device to detect explosives.

At Denver Airport, a major tourist gateway to the nearby Rocky Mountains, Siemens is planning to build a baggage-handling system that could be the first privately financed project of its kind. The new high-speed tray-type system will connect the airport terminals, significantly reducing the minimum connecting time.

Our last "airport of call" on this world tour is Los Angeles, California, which is busy renovating its nine terminals and building two new international terminals, at a cost of $10 billion. The expansion is in anticipation of the A380 and to increase passenger comfort. Siemens will be completely equipping one of the new terminals with the very latest in wireless technology and security systems. "We enjoy a very strong, trusting relationship with airport authorities in the United States," explains Menden. And from here, on America’s West Coast, it’s little more than a short hop back over to Asia, where our journey began.
                                                                                                               Katrin Nikolaus