Passenger Terminal World • Passenger Terminal World January 2026 • Keep score

Data-driven operations: how real-time platforms are redefining airport management

According to an October 2025 report by McKinsey & Company, airports using the right technology in the right way can boost EBITDA by 6-8%. The right technology is, of course, different for each individual airport, but some overriding solutions that have high potential to improve airport revenue, productivity and efficiency emerged in McKinsey’s analysis, including digital twins, sensorization, Gen AI, capacity planning and optimization, and infrastructure predictive maintenance.

However, McKinsey & Company’s report suggests that many airports around the world are “overdue for a digital transformation” with some “hampered by legacy software systems, scattered data and stalled projects that seem stuck in pilot mode.”

One of the key takeaways from the report is the need to encourage airport management to look at other advanced airports to help accelerate the digital transformation. PT World spoke to two standout examples, Houston Airport System (HAS) in the USA and Finavia in Finland, which have overcome the scattered data challenge with smart, in-house innovation, providing key insights into operational efficiency and passenger experience.

When a terminal manager approached Darryl Daniel back in 2022 with an idea to track and score passenger journeys in real time using data analytics, the chief technology officer for HAS saw an opportunity to leverage his team’s technical talent. Four years later, the resulting Passenger Journey Scorecard has become a model that airports across North America are keen to learn from.

“We’re very, very proud of our Passenger Journey Scorecard application,” says Daniel, who also serves as vice chair of Airports Council International – North America’s Business Information Technology Committee. “There’s a lot of airports in North America who are very interested in what we’ve done. Passenger Journey Scorecard is unique, and it’s completely in-house developed.”

The application, which operates at George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and William P Hobby Airport (HOU), provides management with an at-a-glance view of how different aspects of the passenger experience are performing across the airport system.

Prior to developing the scorecard, HAS measured passenger experience through established programs such as ACI World’s Airport Service Quality (ASQ) program and the Skytrax World Airport Audit. According to Skytrax rankings, HOU is the only five-star airport in North America, while IAH maintains four-star status. However, Daniel and his team wanted an even more granular view of the passenger experience.

The Passenger Journey Scorecard project moved quickly from concept to implementation. It was originally brought to Daniel in the first quarter of 2022, and the team established a project charter by July of that year. By May 2023, the first eight journeys [specific passenger touchpoints] were launched, with four additional journeys added in 2024.

The Passenger Journey Scorecard aggregates data from diverse sources throughout the airport, color-coding each journey based on performance and providing an overall score for terminals and the airport. “Users can drill down into the back-end data to understand why certain journeys or terminals are flagged as problematic,” Daniel notes.

The initial eight journeys were selected based on data availability and included restrooms, TSA passenger screening checkpoints, immigration and customs, roadway traffic, wi-fi, conveyances (elevators and escalators), terminal temperature and water pressure.

Some of the data from these journeys provided unexpected insights. “Water pressure, for instance, serves as an early warning system for plumbing issues,” Daniel says. “Meanwhile, the conveyances journey proved its value during a construction incident, when an elevator serving disabled passengers went out of service unexpectedly, forcing the airport to deploy buses on already congested roadways to transport passengers between levels.”

Since the initial launch, HAS has expanded the scorecard to include journeys on flight status, secure doors, lift stations (crucial for flood management in Houston’s low-lying geography) and parking. “The team is also currently working on adding curbside congestion monitoring,” Daniel adds.

The technical infrastructure supporting the scorecard leverages existing resources. HAS built the application on Amazon Web Services, using Amazon Redshift and S3 for data storage and high-performance analytical queries. The team coded the application primarily in Python and SQL, all developed internally.

For data collection, HAS deployed Swift Sensors equipment throughout the airports, though much of the necessary monitoring infrastructure was already in place. “The wi-fi monitoring takes a particularly innovative approach, with probes deployed throughout terminals. These emulate customer devices, pinging websites and reporting back on the actual user experience rather than simply checking if the network is operational,” explains Daniel.

The success of the Passenger Journey Scorecard is partly thanks to strong leadership support from the beginning. “One of the things that made the Passenger Journey Scorecard so successful was that we got buy-in from our chief operating officer from the start. In fact, he is one of the main users of the application,” Daniel says.

This management-level adoption has driven real operational improvements. When Skytrax auditors visit the airports, they receive tablets loaded with the Passenger Journey Scorecard, enabling them to see real-time data as they move through the facilities.

The restroom monitoring provides a concrete example of the scorecard’s value. “When HAS lost custodians through early retirement initiatives, the impact on restroom scores became immediately visible,” Daniel says.

“The scorecard enabled us to easily show authorities the impact these retirements had on our service levels, meaning we could quickly replace workers to bring scores back up,” Daniel reports.

Daniel says that HAS’s director of aviation, Jim Szczesniak, has found the scorecard valuable for demonstrating the impact of infrastructure improvements: “Looking back at roadway traffic data – a significant challenge at IAH in particular, due to ongoing construction – the director can show the Mayor of Houston, for example, how investments in new roadways and curbsides have reduced severe traffic incidents to zero and significantly decreased heavy traffic occurrences.”

Quantifying the return on investment for the Passenger Journey Scorecard is challenging, largely because the development leveraged existing tools and resources. However, Daniel sees the returns in ways that go beyond traditional financial metrics.

“We are always going to be at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to recruiting technical talent, because we can’t pay what the private sector can,” he says. “But we aim to recruit on mission and retain on culture, and I believe the scorecard is a great example of how this works in practice.”

The Passenger Journey Scorecard demonstrates the kind of innovative work that helps retain talent in the public sector. “Tech workers want to work for an organization where they have opportunities to work on really innovative solutions like this that make a difference,” Daniel adds.

While the current scorecard excels at providing real-time situational awareness, Daniel’s team has ambitious plans for its future. The next phase focuses on moving from reactive to predictive and eventually prescriptive capabilities.

“What we’re trying to implement now is a more predictive element,” Daniel explains. “Rather than responding to congestion at passenger screening checkpoints, the system would recommend opening additional lanes ahead of an anticipated influx of passengers.”

This evolution requires increasingly granular data, and HAS is working to incentivize airline partners to share more information. “The goal is to receive booking data at various intervals before flights, broken down to show origin-destination passengers versus connecting passengers – critical information for understanding baggage flow and operational needs,” Daniel adds.

Future development also includes investment in private wireless networks throughout terminals, ramps and airport grounds. HAS is exploring the use of private wireless networks through the Citizens Broadband Radio Spectrum (CBRS), a US frequency band originally designated for military use but now available for commercial and public applications. “Several US airports, including Miami and Dallas Fort Worth, are leading in this space,” says Daniel. “HAS is following suit, deploying a CBRS network to support its roadway camera project aimed at improving vehicle traffic monitoring.”

Meanwhile, over in Finland, airport operator Finavia is embracing a similar data-gathering and analytics solution to enhance airport-wide operations. The Airport Operational Status (AOS) system has been developed in-house by Finavia for use across its 20 airports in the country, and aims to redefine how they communicate, collaborate and respond to real-time events across all aspects of their operations.

For Timo Järvelä, the airport operator’s VP of new business development, commercial and real estate, the AOS is much more than a digital dashboard – it has become the “operational nerve center of Helsinki Airport.”

He explains, “The AOS is the link between the Airport Operations Center (APOC) and the entire airport community. While APOC provides the physical control center, AOS is the digital tool that ensures our communication and coordination are not bound by physical walls.”

Finavia’s journey with the AOS began a decade ago, grounded in the idea that data should not exist in silos. “From the beginning, it was never just about Finavia,” Järvelä explains. “We involved key stakeholders like Finnair (our biggest airline) and major ground handlers. Everyone needed to be part of the transformation from isolated systems to a shared, transparent data environment.”

Today, that vision has materialized as a mature system with more than 6,500 active users across the entire airport community, from airlines and ground handlers to commercial vendors and authorities. “Basically, 99% of the staff working at Helsinki Airport are already active on AOS. That shows how embedded it is in daily life,” Järvelä notes.

While many airports focus on centralizing control rooms physically to ensure communication, Finavia took a different route. “Our approach has been to make the digital tools and data sharing so efficient that we don’t need to physically centralize every function,” Järvelä explains.

“Apron management and baggage handling still operate from separate control rooms, but through AOS they’re all speaking the same language.”

This decentralized-yet-connected approach has enabled Helsinki Airport to streamline workflows and boost preparedness without the infrastructure and personnel demands of a fully centralized APOC.

At its core, the AOS serves as a shared communications platform. It delivers real-time information on flights, baggage, airside operations and even public transportation links. Over the years, its scope has expanded beyond basic flight data. “The solution started out with just flight arrivals and departures information – the fundamentals,” Järvelä says. “But now we include KPIs like punctuality and on-time performance, weather data and even lunch menus for airport staff.”

The expansion also included integration with the Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) system, public transportation updates and performance statistics. “When everyone knows how many passengers are expected, where delays are, or that there’s construction near a gate, they can adjust their activities accordingly. That’s how you improve customer experience and efficiency,” Järvelä adds.

Perhaps the most significant evolution of AOS in recent years has been in emergency response. Through AOS, Finavia has developed more than 150 emergency response scenarios, each complete with predefined actions, digital maps and real-time reporting functions.

“We’ve built ready-made checklists for each responsible unit, whether it’s security or ground operations,” Järvelä says. “When an incident occurs, the right people are alerted immediately, and they report progress through AOS. This removes the burden of dozens of simultaneous phone calls, and speeds up reaction times dramatically.”

The impact has been substantial. “We’ve seen incident response improve by between 5 and 30 minutes,” Järvelä adds. “If a baggage system breaks down during peak hours and we can recover 15 minutes faster – that’s massive. It is not just about saving time; it is about saving the passenger experience.”

One of the key cultural shifts that AOS has supported is the move toward transparency. With open access to key performance indicators and operational statistics, service providers and stakeholders can hold themselves – and each other – accountable.

“We openly share performance data like baggage delivery times, delays by airline or ground handler. That creates internal pressure without needing to micromanage,” Järvelä notes. “Instead of calling a provider to ask what’s going on, they’re already monitoring their own data and responding in real time.”

The AOS has different user levels and permissions to manage confidentiality, particularly for emergency- or security-related information. “While most data is open, we’re very strict about how we manage and restrict access to sensitive information,” Järvelä reports.

With the EU’s Common Project 1 (CP1) regulation requiring major airports to implement advanced airport operational plans by 2027, Finavia believes it is already ahead of the curve thanks to AOS. CP1 mandates an extended airport operations plan (eAOP) and integration with collaborative systems such as A-CDM to enhance Europe’s air traffic management network.

“Our AOS already fulfills those requirements,” says Järvelä. “We’ve had A-CDM for years, and now we’re implementing a new version of it. Together with AOS, we’re essentially compliant today.”

He believes many other European airports have a considerable journey ahead. He advises that airports “clearly define their internal requirements” and use consultants where needed, “But don’t let them define what’s important for you. Own your content and processes,” he adds.

Like HAS, Finavia is also exploring how the AOS can be used for predictive analytics and AI-assisted decision-making. Some features, such as expected passenger flows and security wait time forecasts, are already in place. But Finavia has broader ambitions, particularly around weather-related operations.

“In the Nordics, winter weather can be a major disrupter. We’re working on integrating AI to create proactive response plans based on forecast data,” Järvelä reveals. “We already have the data; now we want to make the response more automated, less reliant on human input.”

Perhaps most impressively, Finavia’s AOS isn’t just a one-off project. It’s a scalable, ready-made solution that could benefit other industries looking to enhance operational awareness and collaboration. “This tool is not limited to aviation. Any organization that values operational efficiency and community-wide coordination can benefit from AOS,” Järvelä says.

People power

Karin Gylin, head of strategic development and innovation at Swedavia, discussed the importance of putting people and culture at the heart of digital transformation during PTE World Conference 2025 in Madrid. PTW recently caught up with her to find out more

“At Swedavia, we believe that inspiration and clear communication are key to engaging employees with new digital tools and data,” Gylin explains. “Our approach centers on people and the value these solutions bring to their daily work. Business ambassadors play a vital role in showcasing real benefits, with users themselves often being the most effective advocates.”

The airport operator shares progress through monthly innovation presentations and weekly newsletters covering market trends in AI, digitalization and innovation – ensuring transparency and accessibility for all employees. In November, Swedavia hosted a full-day event that brought together leaders from across the organization to explore new digital solutions through inspiration, hands-on trials and experience sharing.

Gylin gives an example from Stockholm Arlanda, Sweden’s largest airport, to show how practical innovation can make a real impact: “A new solution helps staff locate the nearest available wheelchair for PRM passengers via a mobile app – saving time and improving service. Another tool identifies transfer passengers at risk of missing connections, enabling coordinated action across airport stakeholders. We’ve also equipped employees across all our airports with mobile access to BI reports and AI chat tools, ensuring data and digital solutions are always at their fingertips, wherever they are.”

As for key lessons, Gylin suggests making innovation a shared responsibility: “It’s essential that every employee feels they have a role to play and that we’re building this culture together. Transparency is crucial – sharing both successes and failures helps normalize experimentation and encourages creative thinking.”

Recognizing and celebrating those who contribute to innovation, such as through Swedavia’s annual Innovator of the Year award, also helps inspire others, according to Gylin. However, she notes that it’s often tough to find time for innovation in the daily operations: “To address this, we are introducing nanolearnings, peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, and actively promoting the value of making time to explore new ideas, especially in areas like AI, data and digitalization.”

Swedavia is also working to democratize data by making it easier for employees to access and use insights in their daily work. “Business intelligence plays a key role, offering structured models and self-service tools that lower the threshold for data use. A key example is our data portal – a centralized, user-friendly platform with smart search, previews and clear ownership – designed to simplify access, support governance and encourage reuse across the organization.”

Overall, Gylin says data insights are key to improving customer experience and airport operations: “By analyzing passenger flows, dwell times and queue data, we can better predict demand, optimize staffing and improve wayfinding. These insights help reduce congestion, improve service delivery and create a smoother journey for passengers, while also boosting operational efficiency.”

Swedavia is now investing in a new data and analytics platform to help it work with data in a scalable, secure and business-aligned way, while supporting better decision-making and more proactive operations. “We’re also developing a shared operational dashboard that provides both real-time and post-operational insights across airport functions,” Gylin reports. “It improves coordination, situational awareness and responsiveness, ultimately enhancing both operational efficiency and passenger experience.”