Ryanair Check-in Kiosks

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As of October 2008, Stansted Airport in the UK now boasts 80 new IBM checkin kiosks for Ryanair customers to grab up to 180 flights a day.
 
Adrian Dunne, Deputy Director of Ground Operations at Ryanair,said they chose IBM as their partner in this project because of IBM’s “unrivalled knowledge of airline self-service requirements and their willingness to think outside the box in working with Europe’s largest low fares airline to develop new and innovative aspects of our application, including the introduction of the world’s first self-service Chip and PIN payment facility.” Ryanair introduced the kiosks so that they could reduce the number of airport desks at Stansted, and therefore also reduce their associated costs, while at the same time improving the productivity of their service.
 
The results have been phenomenal, allowing Ryanair to reduce their desk requirement by over 80% from 53 desks to just 8 this winter. Ryanair now uses just 6% of Stansted’s 125 desks yet it delivers approximately 70% of Stansted’s traffic. This step change in efficiency has major implications for airport design, allowing for significant reductions in the dimensions and costs of a new terminal at Stansted and much enhanced capacity in the existing terminal.
 
The introduction of Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) and e-border requirements might well mean that the time taken to process passenger’s check-in will increase; by increasing the number of check-in points using the kiosks, this problem has already been anticipated and addressed.The kiosks increase the available contact points for Ryanair’s customers, and also provide a new system for handling delayed or disrupted flights.
 
Ryanair currently operates a fleet of 170 Boeing 737-800’s, from 30 European bases, operating 1100 flights per day, having carried 60 million passengers last year. Their initial purchase of 250 kiosks from IBM will be scattered around Europe so that they are deployed at Ryanair’s key bases throughout the continent. This development and extension will take place during the last months of 2008 and throughout 2009.