Is This the Airport of the Future?

FURTH, Germany, May 17, 2010— -- Hidden along a windswept road in this small, century-old city near Nuremberg in southern Germany lies the future of air travel, or at least Siemens AG's vision of it.

The German engineering giant, whose 400,000-plus employees around the globe develop technology for sectors ranging from health care to energy, erected a sprawling, state of the art mock airport terminal to test and showcase its latest innovations for airports.

Inside the airy, 90,000-square-foot glass and steel structure is an entire infrastructure of an airport, minus only the planes, runways and control tower.

Nearly every aspect of airport operations is tested and developed here, from high-tech baggage handling and fleet-management systems to wireless passenger check-in and 3-D security screening.

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"It may seem like a kind of amusement park for technology," says Stefan Keh, CEO of business unit infrastructure logistics for Munich-based Siemens. "But this facility and the technology being tested and developed here are dedicated to producing solutions that will make traveling safer, more efficient and ultimately better."

The airport center, built in 2005, houses real-time, check-in counters, a parking guidance system, a control center and a luggage conveyor with belt and tray conveyors stretching more than 6,000 feet. The baggage system can handle 30 million pieces of luggage per year. (In Germany, only Munich and Frankfurt airports have larger systems.)

On the passenger side of the terminal, a prototype system is being fine-tuned that would allow travelers to check in using only their mobile phones. Once a passenger makes a phone call to check in, the system then sends back a bar code that displays on the mobile phones screen. Special readers at the airport then scan and print out boarding passes.

"What we're striving for here is the most efficient way to check in and get on board," says Uwe Karl, head of Siemens airport solutions unit. "We are pushing technologies that streamline the airport process."