“Getting more free time reduces stress and gives passengers better opportunities to utilise the services at the airport,” says Eero Knuutila, Head of Service Development at Helsinki Airport.
Helsinki Airport is already well supplied with power sockets and recharging points. Knuutila says the utilisation rate of the fixed recharging points is extremely high during peak hours. With the pocket charger, passengers will not have to waste time looking for a power socket, which reduces their stress levels.
Personal mobile devices have become ever more important. Especially people travelling alone tend to use mobile phones and other electronic devices more than other passengers when visiting the airport.
Transit passengers may already have been in the air for several hours, and their smartphone battery may have run out, so they have an immediate need to recharge it before their next flight – especially as transit passengers are extremely active users of the free wireless internet connection at the airport.
“Until significant advances are made in battery technology for mobile devices to allow wireless recharging of devices with new methods, such as via WLAN or infrared, we have to try out alternative ways of recharging batteries,” says Salla Hankivuo, who is writing her diploma thesis.
Testing portable mobile phone chargers is part of Finavia's customer experience development work. The pilot project is being conducted as part of research for a thesis at Tampere University of Technology. The project at Helsinki Airport is unique, since no similar experiment has been conducted anywhere else in the world.
Pilot project for pocket chargers to take place in July
The test period will begin on 7 July and end on 23 July. The chargers will mainly be distributed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the afternoon peak time from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The pocket chargers, which feature Finavia's logo, will be distributed in the gate area for European and domestic flights. The chargers have a micro-USB plug. They can be used for the majority of Android and Windows phones.
The chargers are collected from the passengers before they board their planes.
Recharging units at Helsinki Airport
Wireless recharging points for mobile phones at Helsinki Airport
Internet and working at Helsinki Airport
