Air New Zealand has begun installing Next Gen check-in kiosks across its network following a successful trial. The rollout starts this week at Auckland Domestic Airport and will extend to all New Zealand ports by the end of July.
Developed by the airline’s in-house research and development team, the kiosks use touchscreen interfaces powered by iPads and built-in cameras for passport scanning. Average check-in time has dropped from more than two minutes to 37 seconds, with the fastest domestic check-in recorded at 18 seconds. Faster scanning, printing and intuitive prompts contribute to the improvement. One group of 21 passengers completed check-in, including boarding passes and bag tags, in 2.5 minutes.
Each new kiosk costs about one-third of previous models, and Air New Zealand expects annual savings exceeding $1 million in maintenance, with reduced need for external support. The kiosks handled over 30,000 passenger journeys during testing, including group bookings.
Jeremy O’Brien, Air New Zealand’s Chief Customer and Digital Officer, said: We focus our innovation efforts on better customer outcomes. The purpose of our research and development team is to make travel easy and frictionless. And no one knows our customers better than our frontline team. As a business, we’ve worked together to develop, test and launch the new kiosks.