ORLANDO, Fla. — Today is expected to be the third busiest travel day of the holiday season at Orlando International Airport; as new COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna eat away at the fear of a never-ending pandemic, OIA hopes to alleviate some coronavirus-related worries themselves with the new Evenflow Crowd Radar system.
Phil Brown, CEO of the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, praised innovation partner Synect for choosing OIA to become the first airport in the world with this new technology:
“The system measures crowd density and empowers passengers with information, increasing their confidence and decreasing their anxiety,” Brown said.
“We think, rather than having a strike team or people patrolling trying to maintain social distancing, if you give passengers information, they will use it to their best advantage,” Brown said.
Synect CEO Yahav Ran echoes Brown’s theory that OIA passengers are best at policing themselves regarding crowd control:
“We are in a situation of a new normal and so far the system has indicated much greater compliance by passengers with social distancing,” Ran said.
The system directs airline passengers to tall, screen-laden consoles that display how crowded certain gates are; green and light green signify an open space, red means it’s full, and yellow falls in between.
Currently, the radar system will only be active throughout gates 101-109 on side A; following the seven-month pilot program which began November 20, a decision will be made to expand the system to the entire airport in June 2021.