In November 2021, a plane from Moroccan airline, Air Arabia, that covered the route between Casablanca and Istanbul had to make an emergency landing at the Son Sant Joan airport in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, due to the alleged poor health conditions of a passenger. This turned out to be a plan by a group of people to enter the Iberian country illegally. 

After landing, about twenty passengers left the aircraft and invaded the runway. Some jumped the fence surrounding the airport and fled, while others were discovered hours later by authorities inside the air terminal. 

The airport was closed for more than three hours, a situation that forced the cancellation of more than 40 flights, whose landing or takeoff was scheduled in that period. 

The traffic disturbances were chaotic for thousands of people who passed through this airport, considered the most important of the Baleares Islands and which has a capacity to dispatch 12,000 passengers per hour and move 25 million travelers a year. 

How to verify identities at airports open areas? 

Well, all airports in the world are exposed daily to this type of situation, fortunately technology evolves and the market offers increasingly innovative solutions to these challenges. 

Given the extensive geography of the airfields, it is not so simple to implement an access control system that raises safety levels in all areas without this representing an increase on infrastructure or hiring more personnel. 

However, for some years now, Alutel  Mobility has been perfecting a solution that allows airports and other industries, to implement an access control system through mobile readers with the Alutel Mobile application. 

This tool allows, in a simpler and more effective way, to obtain instant authentications of the staff in open areas, such as on the runway to mention one, or to access a second control at the airport entrances.

With this solution, the security department or the appropriate authorities can check the identity of the people and their authorization, to stay in specific places at the airport.

In a type of emergency such as the one mentioned at the beginning, this solution would have validated the identities at the scene, the airport runway in this case, and would have contributed to give a solution in a few minutes knowing instantly who had access to be in that area, thus avoiding the prolonged closure of the airport. 

Alutel Mobile can be installed on a tablet with Android operating system, which in turn becomes a remote-mobile access controller that verifies the credentials via QR codes or by typing the identification number of the employee.

Likewise, the application can be taken to another level if used in a more robust tablet such as RAGTAB, a hardware developed to incorporate greater security and comfort to this innovative access control system. With this tablet you can read identifications via RFID, whether they are physical credentials or, also, if they are hosted on mobile phones.   

Regardless of the authentication method, Alutel Mobile automatically checks the access event with the organization's database, with the incentive of being able to work with an internal database to operate off-line, with event backup and subsequent synchronization with the server. 

Security within airports is critical, relevant and urgent and requires investing in the best technology to protect staff, borders and passengers. 

Thus, solutions such as mobile access control present a great opportunity to reduce costs and infrastructure and at the same time obtain a higher level of security in large areas.

Technology to ensure the safety of all personnel during an emergency

Despite significant investments in airport security systems and protocols, the number of events that could occur in the midst of a major logistics operation such as the airport is unpredictable.

In case of an emergency situation that requires an evacuation, for example, there is also another Alutel Mobility application called Mustering, which has features such as counting the people who are on the site differentiating whether they are safe or in danger and in this way minimize the possible risks of the personnel.  

It also uses indoor and outdoor positioning systems to provide real-time location information and solve the problems of having to perform repeated manual checks and personnel listings. 

In addition, it helps ensure the safety of all personnel at a physical site during an emergency, knowing where they are at all times and automatically recording the presence of the staff member as they arrive in safe areas.

Alutel Mobility’s solutions link with and comprehensive airport security systems, provides relevant information to be collected in real time. It is an alternative that must be considered as a real and innovative solution for the challenges presented by large wide-open sites, such as in this case, an airport.

Recently, the company incorporated technology that will allow facial recognition to be used as another method of authentication for its Alutel Mobile solution.  

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