5

Operations and Performance: Airports, Ground Transportation, and Air Traffic Management

In the workshop’s fourth session, moderated by planning committee member Andrew Lacher, three speakers discussed changes that could be made to airports, ground transportation, and air traffic management to limit the risks of COVID-19 and other infectious viruses to passengers and air travel sector personnel. Among the topics covered were how the design of airports and ground transportation systems can be modified to reduce the risk of disease transmission, how airport and ground transportation processes can be made more efficient and more flexible so as to allow for faster responses to the needs generated by future pandemics, and what changes should be made in the interactions among passengers and between passengers and the airport and ground transportation personnel.

The session’s first speaker was Jeffrey Brown, the aviation chief operating officer for the Port of Seattle. In this role, he leads the aviation planning, capital programs, facilities and infrastructure, art program, and airport building departments for the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA). Next was Ashok Srinivasan, the William Nystul eminent scholar, chair, and professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of West Florida. The third speaker was Vygaudus Usackas, a member of the board of directors of the Avia Solutions Group. After their presentations, the speakers took part in a question-and-answer session moderated by Lacher.

IMPROVING SAFETY IN GROUND TRANSPORTATION

The first presenter, Brown, spoke about his experience at SEA in dealing with COVID. Brown also spoke on the lessons learned from that experience, particularly regarding how to limit the risks of pandemic spread in airport ground transportation. “As they say in the aviation industry,” he said, “when you’ve seen one airport, you’ve seen one airport.” Thus, he warned that although many of the experiences he would describe would likely apply to other airports, that could not be taken for granted. Each airport has its own unique history and circumstances.

When the COVID pandemic hit, Brown said, SEA immediately went into reaction mode. It took whatever measures seemed likely to help limit the spread of the virus. The airport installed more than 250 hand sanitizer dispensers and more than 200 protective barriers, instituted frequent sanitation, and put up 8,000 signs and decals instructing people on such things as social distancing. It also put into place protocols for its dining and retail establishments designed to minimize person-to-person contact.

Speaking specifically of ground transportation, Brown listed some of the strategies that SEA used to limit the spread on the virus, particularly the buses that carried people from remote parking lots to the terminal. Employee parking was moved to the main garage so that employees would not have to park in remote lots and take the buses

to the terminal. Parking for employees was available in the main garage, he said, because of the decrease in the number of passengers using the airport during the pandemic. The airport increased the cleaning and sanitation of its buses. If there was any indication that a passenger on one of the buses was sick, that bus was sanitized before it was put back into circulation. SEA looked into putting the rental car facilities, which were located off the airport, into the main terminal with the rental cars in the main airport garage. This positioning would keep rental car customers from using the buses. However, that proved to be impractical for several reasons, including a lack of the necessary wired or optical fiber communications to the garage.

In addition, SEA provided various forms of financial relief to ground transportation operators as part of the relief package that the airport received from the federal government. The airport offered free COVID vaccinations to all its workers, including those in ground transportation. The clinic operated for 3 months and vaccinated more than 8,000 airport employees, Brown said.

Next, Brown spoke about travel attitudes, referring to a study carried out by Gensler, a global design and architecture firm.¹ Gensler focuses on, among many other areas, airport design. The study asked participants which parts of the air travel journey they are most concerned with. Of the respondents, 45 percent answered that they were most concerned about the flight itself, 39 percent pointed to various areas in the airport (gate area, security, baggage check, etc.), and 16 percent mentioned ground transportation as the most concerning. However, when Gensler looked at the answers of heavy travelers versus infrequent travelers, an interesting pattern emerged. The infrequent travelers were most likely to name the flight itself as the most concerning part of the journey (75 percent), while a much smaller portion (25 percent) of frequent travelers were most concerned about the flight. The frequent travelers were more concerned about transmission occurring in the airport terminal (48 percent) and in the commute (27 percent), while relatively few infrequent travelers answered with these segments of the journey.

Looking to the future, Brown said there are three areas within the airport that will need to be redesigned to limit the spread of future pandemics and regain passengers’ confidence: ground transportation, the terminal and pre-security, and checkpoints and post-security. Brown focused on the area of ground transportation.

One point of focus is the terminal curb area where passengers arrive via buses, shuttles, private cars, taxis, and other forms of transportation. It will be important to increase social distancing and thus decrease the total number of passengers who occupy this area at any one time. As an example, speaking of one particular stretch in front of a terminal, Brown said that pre-COVID the area would typically have about 65 passengers at one time. According to the consulting company Ricondo, that number should decrease to 14–20 in the future.

Accomplishing that decrease will require changes in how the airport processes passengers, Brown continued. One such change would be to set aside an area in the main garage (which is adjacent to the airport and joined to it via walkways) for private vehicles to drop passengers off. Those passengers would then be processed before they went into the airport. This system would limit the passengers dropped off at the curb to those arriving via shuttles, buses, and taxis and thus sharply decrease the crowding among arriving passengers.

In closing, Brown listed three goals for airport improvements aimed at limiting the risk of future pandemics along with strategies for achieving each goal.

The first goal is to create a safe and healthy airport environment. For example, using virtual queue technologies that allow passengers to keep their place in line without actually standing in line could improve passenger flow. A second way to achieve this goal would be to invest in smart janitorial and cleaning technologies. A third would be to accelerate the implementation of touchless technologies to help prevent the spread of viruses via surfaces that passengers touch.

The second goal is to restore confidence in travel. One way to do this would be to design airports such that testing and health screening areas are set up in a straightforward manner. Another way would be to partner with airlines on customer confidence initiatives. A third would be to advocate for the development of consistent federal standards on limiting the spread of COVID and other infectious diseases during air travel.

The third goal is to prepare for future pandemics. One way to do this would be to update the airport’s plan for dealing with communicable diseases and pandemics. There should also be a well-developed communications plan

___________________

¹ Gensler, 2020, The Return to Air Travel: Aviation in a Post-Pandemic World, https://www.gensler.com/uploads/document/718/file/Gensler-The-Return-to-Air-Travel-2020.pdf, accessed August 28, 2021.

designed to let passengers know what the airport is doing to respond to a pandemic and what is expected from the passengers, such as social distancing or the wearing of masks. Last, the airport should ensure that its training is up-to-date for all customer-facing staff.

LIMITING TRANSMISSION RISKS IN AIRPORTS

Srinivasan leads a multidisciplinary project, Viral Infection Propagation Through Air Travel (VIPRA), whose goal, he said, is to ensure social distancing without disrupting human activities. His presentation focused on academic research informing tactical decision making at airports, particularly with regard to the findings from VIPRA on the best way for airports to handle arriving and departing passengers. The main finding, he said, could be summed up simply as, “If passengers used N95 masks, they can be quite safe even if a lot of other factors go wrong.” Thus, even in the absence of universal masking, individuals who wear an N95 mask are reasonably well protected.

Having offered that bottom line, Srinivasan then provided the details of the research that led to that conclusion. His research relies on a technique called “pedestrian dynamics” to simulate the movement of individuals in an airport, airplane cabin, or other area. In essence, he explained, the idea is to model how people move “at a very fine granularity,” and then observe who is getting close to whom. This technique makes it possible to estimate infection risks based on the patterns of contact between people. Some researchers, he said, use pedestrian dynamics simply to look at the efficiency of moving people without looking at infection risks.

The basic idea behind his analyses, he said, is that one begins with the various policies in place that affect the flow of passengers. Policies include the airport layout, on-ground procedures, boarding and deplaning, and in-flight procedures. Then he models the movement of people through airports and airplanes, calculates the number of contacts individuals have during their travel, and uses transmissibility data to estimate the number of individuals who would become infected. The model can be expanded to look at contacts and transmissibility in airports around the world, taking into account differing local policies. The predictions of the model can then be compared with real-world data to refine the model. Ultimately, the model can be used to determine better policies for reducing the spread of infection.

A major problem with this approach is that it is difficult to make predictions with the model. This is due in part to a lack of data, particularly in the early stage of a pandemic, and to the uncertainty in human behavior. Even when there is a significant amount of data, Srinivasan said, it can still be difficult to determine the correct parameters for the model. A few big outbreaks will be responsible for a large percentage of the transmissions. That is, most of the infections occur under unusual circumstances. The result is that it can be basically impossible to come up with exact predictions, with the models tending to underestimate risk.

One way of dealing with inexact predications is to model many possible scenarios. In his group’s largest simulation, Srinivasan said, they ran 10 million simulations. Once the simulations are run, they compare policies under many possible scenarios and examine whether one policy is consistently better under all circumstances. If so, that policy can be confidently recommended, even if one cannot trust the estimates to provide accurate predictions. As such, the group does not try to predict what is going to happen under any particular policy, but rather tries to identify which policies are better than others.

As an example, Srinivasan showed the results of boarding simulations under different policies. Results are given in terms of person-minutes of contact—that is, the total number of minutes of contact between individuals during the boarding of an aircraft. Surprisingly, the simulation showed that the new boarding procedures where passengers boarded from back to front is worse. This procedure results in large clusters of people, increasing the total contact. Random boarding is the best scenario, he said, because it results in a lot of small clusters of people rather than a few large clusters of people. The smaller clusters result in less contact.

The same analysis can be used in baggage claim areas, food courts, or other parts of the airport to determine the policies that result in the least transmission. For example, he said, his group showed that a suitable design for an airport’s security queue can reduce the contacts by 75 percent. Interestingly, analyses showed that solid barriers are not always effective. Unlike the case with airline cabins, where one can be sure that random boarding is a

better choice than back-to-front boarding on every aircraft, he said, in airports the particular details of the layout and process matter quite a lot. As such, there is no one takeaway lesson about the best approach.

Generally speaking, Srinivasan said, the infection risk is not particularly high under typical circumstances. However, because there are many different possible situations, large outbreaks will occur occasionally unless specific action is taken to prevent them.

A major factor in transmission risk, he said, is air quality. It has been shown, for instance, that the air exchange rate plays an important role in that risk, as does the air quality in shuttles, buses, and other crowded locations. However, individuals cannot do anything to affect the air quality. What they can do is wear masks in case they find themselves in areas with poor air quality.

In particular, he said, it is crucial to have a good mask, such as an N95. When the number of viral particles in the air is relatively small, even a poor mask is significantly better than no mask, and it can reduce the risk of infection by about 50 percent. However, when the viral load is high—that is, in those situations that lead to significant outbreaks—a person wearing a poor mask is almost as likely to be infected as one wearing no mask. On the other hand, an N95 mask will significantly reduce the chances of infection in all circumstances. Compared with regular masks, Srinivasan said, N95 masks can reduce almost all risk as long as they are worn properly. Even if they are not, they still reduce the risk significantly. In short, he said, “You can get a lot of things wrong, but if you wear an N95 mask, you can eliminate almost all risk.”

Srinivasan listed some of the steps taken by Tallahassee International Airport, as an example of pandemic preparation or other emergency airport preparations. In preparing for such disasters as hurricanes, Ebola, and biological attacks, Tallahassee International collected N95 masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) and installed abundant hand sanitizers. They carried out air-quality studies and configured its air-handling systems for maximum fresh air. Eye-catching messaging was installed. Additionally, they developed personal plans for employees, which, among other things, called for sick employees to stay home so that they would not infect other employees or airport users. An important thing to note, he said, is that the plan was not aimed at COVID, as it was developed before that pandemic. Nevertheless, it had aspects that were useful in dealing with COVID. Thus, it is possible to prepare for unknown risks, at least to some degree.

Generally speaking, Srinivasan said, there is a substantial risk of new, unexpected disasters occurring. This is in part because modern society is geared for optimization rather than robustness. Another contributing factor is that short-term benefits are incentivized over long-term sustainability. For example, when a pandemic hits, it can be controlled more effectively in its early stages than in later stages, so it is valuable to react early. However, most of the time an early outbreak will not lead to a pandemic, so an early response may end up being an unnecessary effort and expense. The question, then, is whether the public will accept the cost of early mitigation or see it as unnecessary.

The pandemic solutions that are decided upon need to take human response into account, he said. Many people do not necessarily accept the science behind public health responses to a pandemic, he said. “So rather than complaining about people not following science, maybe we should look at that as a reality of humans and try to account for that in terms of designing policies that are robust,” even if a number of people are not following the policy.

In closing, Srinivasan said that academic researchers can help airports deal with a pandemic by coming up with effective approaches, particularly those that take human nature into account. For example, pedestrian dynamics can be used to ensure social distancing without any disruption to human activities. Fluid dynamics calculations can simulate air flow in an airport and point to ways to improve air quality and circulation. Already, he said, a number of VIPRA results have shown the way to more effective COVID-related policies in airports. VIPRA pointed out the usefulness of masks in February 2020, for instance, and at about the same time pointed out the risk of local COVID outbreaks when many public health agencies were not particularly concerned. In March 2020, it identified the role of aerosol-based spread in COVID transmission, showing that 6-foot social distancing is inadequate. Last, as mentioned earlier, it identified the ineffectiveness of back-to-front boarding on airplanes.

A BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE ON RECOVERY FROM THE EFFECTS OF THE COVID PANDEMIC

Usackas’s presentation covered the COVID pandemic and lessons learned from the business sector perspective. Avia Solutions Group, the company on whose board of directors Usackas serves, provides a large range of services, from air cargo and ground handling to pilot training, maintenance, and overhaul.

Over time, Usackas said, the aviation industry has proven to be resilient in its response to various crises, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, and the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. Its record over the past decade has been one of steady growth. However, the effects of the COVID pandemic were unprecedented in terms of the sharp drop in passenger-miles. Most European airlines were technically bankrupt and were kept afloat only by billions of euros in government support. A similar condition was true for American airlines.

Still, he continued, the long-term future of the air travel industry is bright. Usackas reported that projections made by Boeing for sales of jet airplanes over the period 2020–2039 show that there will be a remarkable recovery, and the number of airlines operated in fleets around the world will nearly double during that period (from 25,900 to 48,400). Much of the increase will be owing to growth in the Asian Pacific market, but the North American and European markets are also projected to have significant growth.

To meet those projections and recover from the COVID pandemic, Usackas said, the global air travel industry will need to take a dual approach. First, it must recover well from the challenges of the COVID period and get back to its normal pattern of innovation and growth. Second, however, it must prepare for future challenges. Not only in the United States and Europe but also around the world, the aviation industry needs to look to its collective experience and apply learned lessons.

One thing is sure, he said: the passenger experience in air travel will change—and, indeed, is already changing. At this point, the responses to the pandemic have been different in every country and sometimes every airport. As such, passengers face different policies and restrictions from place to place as they travel. However, over time the air travel industry will move toward a passenger experience that Usackas described as “as touchless as possible, as electronic as feasible, and as convenient as possible” for both passengers and cargo. “Operators are already looking for more ways to manage online and off-airport solutions, seeking to minimize the interactions passengers will need and to simplify the process of getting airborne,” he said. Examples include the development of online check-in, COVID tests, and passport verification, to name a few. Another possible approach would be a service that collects baggage from a passenger’s home or office and checks it through the destination.

“I believe that people will not stop traveling,” he said. “There is a high degree of hunger to go back and fly, but they want the industry and the regulatory authorities to safeguard the journey at every stage.”

Usackas then spoke about requirements from the industry infrastructure needed to meet the demands of the COVID pandemic and future challenges. First, airports and airlines will need PPE permanently available so that protection can be put in place immediately upon demand. A fast response will be essential, he said, and it will be important to better calibrate, as a community, how to deal with a potential disease as quickly as possible.

Second, he continued, it is important to understand and appreciate that everyone in the aviation chain, from a forklift truck driver to an airline captain, is critical in times of emergency.

Third, it is important to avoid an explosion of prices in response to a pandemic. This occurred, for example, in the cost of facemasks early in the COVID pandemic, in part, Usackas said, because of protectionist measures in China. Another issue was the cost of transportation via aircraft, particularly for cargo. In April through June of 2020, some government agencies received preferential access to almost all Boeing 747 capacity by paying significantly over market price. As a result, the cost of flying a 747 on Pacific flights more than doubled. “Of course,” he said, “someone’s taxpayers had to pay, while other governments could not afford to do that.” That explosion in prices disrupted not only the market but also the level playing field that is expected in air transport. This limited some government’s access to the important Chinese market. There needs to be international cooperation aimed at avoiding such explosions in prices, he said.

Last, Usackas said, it is important that aircraft be free, as much as possible, to operate wherever they need to go, as part of a concerted effort by governments around the world. In particular, it would be valuable to have a pool of reserve aircraft that could be used in the event of another crisis.

It is not just the changes that will happen in the future that are important to address, he said, but also those that have already happened as a result of the COVID pandemic. One of these changes was an increased demand for air cargo in the international air fleet. Before the pandemic, about 40 percent of air cargo was carried in the bellies of passenger jets, but the pandemic led to a sharp drop in the number of passengers, both nationally and particularly internationally. The drop was combined with an increase in demand for air cargo, driven in part by the air transport of medical supplies. Thus, a number of passenger planes were converted to cargo-capable aircraft. In the future, Usackas said, that conversion process will need to become easier and more convenient as well as more flexible.

In conclusion, he said, there is no doubt that aviation will bounce back and once again be the resilient and trusted industry that people have relied on in the past. However, it will be vital for the industry to learn lessons from the COVID pandemic and plan for the management of future pandemics. The industry must maintain its commitment to and focus on safety. If so, the trust and confidence of passengers will return. New innovations and new technology will enable the industry to regain its previous status in terms of the numbers of passengers it carries safely around the world. However, governments and international bodies must also play a role in assuring that safety. Global-level planning will be essential, and flexibility and diversification will also play a major role.

DISCUSSION

In the discussion period, Lacher began by addressing Brown about travelers’ perceptions of the risks in air travel and how the perceptions differed between heavy travelers and infrequent travelers. Lacher asked whether these perceptions of risks had been compared to the actual risks.

“It can be done, and it has been done,” Srinivasan said, mentioning a group at Harvard University that has quantified various risks associated with air travel. However, he continued, knowing what the real risks are is just part of the battle. People are often skeptical about the science. The skepticism is, in large part, because of the perception that many of the studies are skewed because they are funded by the air transportation industry. Also, many people who fly get sick afterward, and they tend to blame the airplane or the airport environment. This anecdotal evidence can carry more weight than scientific studies for many people. “Convincing people is the most difficult aspect,” he said, “and I think we probably need scientific studies that are not sponsored by our transportation industry to convince people, even if the science is correct.”

Next, Parimal Kopardekar asked three questions: What infrastructure is needed to deal with pandemics that does not exist today? What are the weak links in the aviation industry’s value chain that need to be strengthened? And where should the industry’s research and development (R&D) efforts be focused?

Brown answered first, addressing the infrastructure question. As he mentioned in his talk, SEA was not able to locate the rental car facilities in the main terminal because the terminal did not have the necessary communications infrastructure for car rentals. Adding such infrastructure could help those renting cars in a future pandemic avoid taking a shuttle to a remote car lot. Another possible addition, he said, would be infrastructure that accommodates driverless shuttles; a technology that could prevent transmission of a disease to shuttle drivers.

Usackas mentioned one infrastructure challenge: balancing the desire to limit passenger congestion in order to limit transmission versus the natural interest of airports to provide commercial activities—dining, retail, and so on. Such activities are inevitably most profitable when there are large numbers of people in a small area. He then turned to the issue of value chains. During the pandemic, when countries were struggling to get enough medical equipment and PPE, he observed individual European Union countries acting in their national interest at the expense of international collaboration. There were even situations, he said, where cargoes ended up going to destinations where they were not supposed to go. “I witnessed a lack of political and international leadership,” he said. In the future, it will be important to focus more on shared responsibilities and joint efforts.

Regarding R&D, Srinivasan suggested that individual airport operators could benefit from working with researchers, perhaps from a local university. Partnerships could develop simulations of pedestrian movements within their specific facilities. This would allow them to determine which policies would be most effective in

their airport in limiting the risk of transmission. Brown followed up by noting that early in the pandemic, there were questions about the effectiveness of airport employees and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers wearing masks. Research that unequivocally assessed whether the masks were effective would have been useful at that point.

Edward Crawley noted that the airline industry in the United States lost a few poorly capitalized carriers, but that for the most part the industry’s structure was mostly unaffected. What about in Europe and central Asia? Has the COVID pandemic changed the structure of the aerospace business in these countries because it forced out the weak actors?

Usackas answered that there have not yet been major failures in the European air transportation sector, mainly because of historically unprecedented government support of many companies. One result has been stronger governmental supervision of the different companies and a desire for the companies to use this as an opportunity to become more efficient. In turn, such support has led many of the companies to outsource some of their nonessential activities, such as crew training. In the medium term, he said, there will probably continue to be some bankruptcies. However, the national carriers will continue to get the state aid they need to survive. A key question is to what extent the industry will be more competitive in the future. Usackas said that he believes that national carriers are likely to lose business over time to the more aggressive, leaner, and more flexible companies such as Ryanair.

Next, Lacher passed along a question from an audience member: In modeling the behavior of people in airports and airplanes, what can be done to take into account cultural differences in behavior? Srinivasan answered that in computer science, there are a number of techniques to deal with that. In essence, one starts with a situation for which one has a lot of data and a clear understanding of the behavior. Then one uses that as a baseline to model a different situation using a relatively small amount of new data. However, he added, “sometimes getting that little bit of data is the hard part for academic researchers.”

Lacher followed up by asking Srinivasan which particular types of real data sets he and other academic researchers need in order to carry out their modeling. Srinivasan answered that much of the data such researchers rely on has a resolution of around 10 meters, so it cannot be used to model fine-scale interaction patterns. One way to get data on a finer scale would be to use public webcams that show the movement of people in a given location and use computer vision techniques to analyze people’s movements and use that as model input. However, while such webcam data exist, for security reasons they are often not made publicly available. Srinivasan suggested that one way to get around this limitation would be to work with the owners of the data to extract the relevant features of the individuals’ movements without taking away any identifiable information about those individuals. This would make it possible to create accurate models of how people move in different places and situations.

An audience member asked the same question that was asked of the previous panel: When an aircraft is at the gate, the ventilation is different from when it is in flight. Is anything being done to improve that ventilation at the gate? Brown answered that aircraft at the gate at SEA are provided with “preconditioned air” from a central location that keeps the interior of the aircraft at a certain temperature best for the electronic equipment on board. That preconditioned air is passed through highly efficient filters that can remove viruses from the air entering the cabin.

Lacher then asked Brown whether he had seen differences in passenger behavior as they are coming back to air travel. Brown answered that although the numbers of passengers are still down compared with 2019, the crowding at peak hours is about the same. This is true because the peak period is shorter than it was 2 years ago. So, while there are fewer total passengers, it is still difficult to have effective social distancing during peak times. Another difference is that most passengers—about 95 percent—are now wearing masks at SEA.

Next, workshop planning committee member Vicki Hertzberg asked each of the panelists what they saw as the major knowledge gaps that need to be filled to address the next pandemic. Brown answered that he needs clear answers on what works and what does not work in terms of limiting the risk of transmission during air travel. Given an airport’s limited resources, he said it is important that SEA and other airports know which systems and processes are going to work.

Usackas followed up on that by saying that, first, it will be important to prepare a “textbook” of lessons learned from this pandemic. Those lessons would then be ready to be applied to the next pandemic instead of people having to learn them all over again. Second, he said, governments should invest in PPE and other items needed to respond to a pandemic. These should be kept in reserve so that they are ready quickly if needed. Third,

he said, small innovative solutions such as touchless technology will be important in dealing more effectively with the next pandemic.

Srinivasan answered that in terms of scientific research, scientists do a good job of learning how to deal with “known unknowns.” They accumulate data, construct models, and figure out the best approaches. However, the methods for dealing with “unknown unknowns” are still not well developed. “How do you deal with new situations that you didn’t anticipate?” he asked. Because answering this question will involve fundamental methodological issues in multiple areas, it is difficult to know which funding agencies might support such research. That is one challenge that needs to be met, he said.

Lacher commented that a number of procedures were implemented early in the pandemic that later proved to be not particularly effective—such as the regular disinfecting of surfaces, given that the risk of COVID transmission via fomites has been found to be relatively small. He asked whether there are examples of this sort of “hygiene theater” that are costing service providers significant resources and are distracting from techniques that really are effective.

Brown answered that these techniques do serve a purpose in the sense that they give passengers greater confidence to see the airport and airline employees paying attention. Furthermore, if such cleaning were stopped, passengers might believe that the airport or airline were not being careful in other areas, either. Sometimes appearance can be important, he said, and if the cleaning of surfaces is to be discontinued, it should be done gradually so that passengers have time to get used to it.

Lacher then asked what changes, in addition to touchless check-in technologies and the like, may be made in the future to reduce interactions between passengers and airport personnel. Usackas pointed again to the luggage service that is already being offered in Europe, where luggage is picked up at home or hotel or office and delivered to check-in and then, after the flight, delivered to the final destination. This saves the passenger from various interactions involved with checking luggage and, later, picking it up at the luggage carousel. He added that one area where new technologies or procedures would be most helpful would be in limiting interactions at the entrance to the airport. Here, it is often the case that a lot of people have gathered just outside the doors.

Brown suggested that it would be valuable for taxis to use the same sort of technology that Uber and Lyft use to allow passengers to interact with the driver mainly over a smartphone. There are also apps for passengers to perform ticketing and check-in without personal interaction. It would be useful, Brown said, to have one platform that included these different apps so that passengers would be more likely to use all three.

Lacher commented that one problem with having these apps is that they will likely be different for every airport. How, he asked, can standards be developed to ensure compatibility among different airports and airlines? That is a good question, Usackas replied. It will probably require regulatory authorities to come up with common standards. Ultimately, he said, he believes that a more integrated approach will be developed.

Next, Lacher said that the TSA publishes data on the number of TSA employees infected with COVID at each TSA location and the last time that a TSA employee had a positive test at a given location. Would such transparency from other operators and service providers associated with air transportation increase public confidence? Usackas answered that it absolutely would and that he believes openness and transparency are important in assuring the public that agencies can be trusted. Brown said that there have been discussions at SEA about such a policy, but that there are also various privacy concerns related to it. Ultimately, he said, the information could be valuable as an indication of what is working and what is not working in terms of limiting transmission.

In closing the session, Lacher asked each panelist for one key lesson from the response to the COVID pandemic that will help in preparing for future pandemics. Brown answered that profit should never take priority over passenger safety. If safety and security are taken care of, profits will come. Srinivasan said that there are a number of novel data streams that can provide useful information for pandemic mitigation using computer science techniques. These data streams have been used in certain other contexts, but there is great potential for them to be used in the transportation sector. Usackas answered that while the aviation industry is probably more advanced than most other industries in terms of preparation, it was surprised by and unprepared for the COVID pandemic. The lesson is to always be ready and vigilant for the next disaster. Furthermore, responses to such disasters should be comprehensive and collaborative, and must go beyond national borders.