BGRs Successfully Installed at Heathrow and Gatwick
Reading, UK, February 1, 2007 – London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports have successfully installed the latest technology in boarding gate readers that handle both new-format 2D BCBP and traditional ATB2 boarding passes.
Certified for use with both SITA’s CUTE® and ARINC’s iMUSE® common use platforms, the BGR120M, from UK manufacturer Access, was fully tested and installed in just eight weeks, in time for the Christmas rush.
The new gate readers were primarily required to enable 2D BCBP ‘self-printed’ passenger boarding passes and check-in documents to be read. As a considerable proportion of both airports’ passengers transfer the device also needed to be capable of accepting ATB2 magnetically encoded boarding passes during the transition period, before ATB2 is withdrawn by December 2008 as part of IATA’s “Simplifying the Business” initiative.
The bar code imager is highly intuitive to use by ground staff and trials found that the device significantly reduced boarding time. Philip Holt, Heathrow’s Senior Project Manager, said of the Access BGR120M device “We were attracted to the Access BGR120M due to its intuitive operation, compact design and straight-through document path, which eliminated jamming. It promises to be a very cost-effective solution that should greatly help the boarding process and we are expecting a dramatic reduction in the number of support calls we get. It’s also a very well designed product that will be easy to maintain.”
Both Heathrow and Gatwick ran extensive trials before committing to installing the new boarding gate readers. 400 are now in daily use in these airports.
Philip Holt added, “We set a very tight timescale installation plan which had to be completed. Access was quick to respond to our special requirements and the project completed on schedule.”
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