Five International Airports With Innovations We Love

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Los Angeles’s LAX airport is overhauling its facilities to the tune of $14 billion. As holiday travel season approaches, we look at are some cutting-edge features that America’s busiest airport by origin could borrow from its new and recently updated peers around the world.

Beijing (PKX)

The two-month-old Zaha Hadid-designed Beijing Daxing International Airport has a partner­ship with Huawei Technologies Co., which provides facial recognition technology so travelers can check luggage, go through security, and board the plane without ever showing ID.

Istanbul (IST)

With plans to become the world’s busiest transit center, the city’s new facility has introduced a fleet of child-size humanoid robots to make sure no one gets lost.

London (LCY)

As part of a $650 million redevelopment that starts rolling out in 2020, the supercentral City Airport will feature the first fully digital air traffic control tower. It’s actually a remote mission control center, combining real-time footage from 16 cameras.

Singapore (SIN)

Jewel Changi might be the first airport where you miss a flight because you were having fun. Opened in the spring, it has bouncy “sky net” walkways that cut through an indoor forest canopy, a hedge maze, and a 75-foot waterfall, plus playgrounds galore.

Stuttgart (STR)

This secondary hub—not the sprawling Frankfurt Airport—is paving the way for the future of German transit, with a pledge to be fully carbon-neutral by 2050. That’s not just hot air: Already it’s partially powered by a rooftop solar array, uses electric vehicles to move all passengers and cargo around the airport, and employs a special air traffic control system that coordinates landing patterns for optimal fuel efficiency.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Rovzar at crovzar@bloomberg.net

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.