In conversation with Karin Gylin and Mats Berglind, Swedavia

At Passenger Terminal Expo we caught up with Karin Gylin, Head of Strategic Development and Innovation and Mats Berglind, Innovation Manager at Swedavia.

Together, they discussed the recovery of their airports, the passenger trends that they have been seeing emerge and the sense that they just want things to get back to normal as soon as possible. Karin went on to say that passengers are more used to digital experiences, but interestingly that Swedavia was of the opinion that touchless technology was maybe not be the key to getting passengers back to their airports as with the changing regulations, passengers were more concerned about whether they would actually be able to get back to Sweden.

According to Karin, the proudest achievement for Swedavia during the pandemic was that the operator achieved fossil-free operations for its 10 airports.

Karin and Mats went on to discuss how they are looking to push the seamless passenger experience further and said that they are looking at off-airport processing and getting people more travel-ready before they enter the airport through the use of off-airport baggage and check-in, 

Mats revealed that the innovation that he is most excited about the new fully autonomous snow plough, sweepers and blowers which would also be used in the summer to sweep the runways.

The innovation department works closely with the sustainability department at Swedavia and one special project that Mats spoke about was capturing data of passengers in a particular area of the airport. The data is then fed into climate control systems to control climate of passengers in that particular zones. Mats went on to say that it has lowered the need for ventilation by 30 per cent which is huge when it comes to energy consumption. The implications for this also go even further and can lengthen the life expectancy of climate systems, turn lamps on/off, can be used to detect if people are not authorised to be in specific areas. They key, Mats says is to be creative with it.