Airport Wait Times Set to Drop With New Technology, Rockwell Collin’s Arinc Says

September 3, 2013 Leave a comment

Airport Wait Times Set to Drop With New Technology, Arinc Says

Passengers will spend less time at airports in coming years as more efficient operators deploy advanced technology to reduce waiting, aviation services company Arinc Inc. said. Arinc’s products targeted at improving the screening of passenger information and travel documents to improve the flow through terminals will help make travel “much less stressful,” said Michael DiGeorge, a Singapore-based managing director of the Asia-Pacific division for the Annapolis, Maryland-based company, which Rockwell Collins Inc. (COL) agreed last month to buy for $1.39 billion.“The passenger is the one who’s going to have more control over that whole experience than they currently have,” DiGeorge said in a phone interview on Aug. 30. “That process of going from check-in through immigration through boarding is going to get more invisible.”

Wait times to clear customs and immigration at major U.S. airports regularly exceed targets, with travelers often waiting three hours or more, causing industry concerns that landing rights will be denied during peak congestion, Tony Tyler, chief executive officer of the International Air Transport Association, said in a speech in April.

Myanmar and Vietnam are among Asian nations planning to build new airports, while Singapore plans to build a new terminal that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said last month is needed to respond to competition from regional airports such as those in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.

“Airports are going to be competing against each other,” DiGeorge said. “It’s the airports that can provide the best experience for the passenger, and get them from curbside to the gate the quickest, that is going to attract those passengers.”

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Jason Folkmanis in Ho Chi Minh City at folkmanis@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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