Manchester Airport is trialling a new long-lasting sanitising product in high traffic areas and non-mandatory thermal-imaging technology to detect travellers with high temperatures as it prepares to re-open for international travel.
Speaking on a Travel Weekly Roadmap to Recovery webcast, chief operating officer Brad Miller said: “The number one message for me to get across is that [the airport] is totally safe and secure. We’re an airport operator, so we always looked at safety and security pre Covid-19, but even more so now.”
He said passengers using the airport would “feel a bit different” and “see some different things”, such as all staff wearing face masks, gloves where necessary and face shields for those with meet & greet duties.
They will also notice more Perspex screens at check-in desks and boarding gates, additional cleaning staff in high visibility clothing and new ‘mock’ scanners to allow passengers to check if their bag will get through security before attempting it.
The latter have been installed to alert people to hand gels which are more frequently being carried in hand luggage because of Covid-19, Miller said.
Referring to ‘infection hot-spot’ trays that travellers put their personal belongings in to pass through security, Miller said: “They can be a breeding ground – but not at Manchester Airport.
“Within our new terminal, once we open that, all of those security trays will be impregnated with disinfectants, so it’s actually put in as part of the manufacturing process.”
He added: “We’re also applying a brand new product that kills coronavirus. It acts like a sealant and it can last for up to six months. It’s a brand new product for us and for the rest of the industry, so we are having to go back and test it, but in those high traffic areas, we’re making sure that it does have that holdover period.
“Unfortunately you can’t see it, but we know it’s there and we’re going to continue that regime.”
Miller said the airport was also working with its cleaning partner to invest in advanced equipment.
“We can actually aerosol the disinfectant, so not only through security, but we can cover great distances and we can actually follow the passengers’ journey through the airport. So we can cover vast areas, like a whole gate area, within about two minutes,” he said.
“We’ve got a lot of additional people out in the terminal cleaning and they’re wearing very highly visible uniforms. And all of those people are concentrating on those higher touch points like trays, lift buttons, handrails, door handles.”
Miller also confirmed the airport was trialling several types of temperature testing technology, even though the equipment has not been made mandatory by the government.
“We’ve been trialling equipment for about three or four weeks now, and we have some new equipment turning up at the end of June, which again,” he said.
“It’s not regulatory at the moment but we wanted it to get ahead of the game, just in case it is it is stipulated, so we can make sure we’re used to using the equipment.
“It means we will know how it interfaces with our operation; we will understand how passengers are going to react to it; plus it’s allowed us to start those conversations with our airline partners, because some are asking for it, some would prefer it, and some don’t.”
He added: “To try and keep the 70-odd airlines that use Manchester Airport; to work with all of them, we wanted to make sure that we could understand these types of questions that we’ll have to answer.
“Until it’s absolutely mandated, we won’t formally bring it in. We’ll continue to trial it and we’ll continue collecting the data in terms of people’s temperatures and how many people are above the 37.8 degrees and how many are absolutely fine.”
Miller said the trials had thrown up a number of questions relating to the testing.
“Where in the airport journeys should thermal imaging take place? What happens if somebody fails?” he said.
“Why might they fail that particular test, and there’s a whole raft of different reasons why you might fail – ranging from you may be a bit anxious; through to you may just have been doing exercise; or you may have had a drink the night before; or you may be going through the menopause.
“There are so many different reasons and are we going to rely upon one test being filed or are we going to have a second? Allow people a second go at it?”
He added: “If someone gets rejected, who pays for the flight? There’s a raft of different things we need to work through but the trial’s allowed us to unearth all of that.”