Vancouver International Airport – Breathing fresh air
The Vancouver International Airport (YVR) is counting among our very valued and one of Simpleway’s earliest customers. For over a decade, our software has had the privilege of supporting YVR. Hence, we are pleased to announce the successful completion of a significant software upgrade that meets the latest technology and security standards. In our recent news post, we congratulated YVR for claiming the title of Best Airport in North America at the prestigious Skytrax World Airport Awards once again.
The initial installation of our voice module at Vancouver International Airport dates back to 2011. Our solution delivers automated and dynamic voice announcements to passengers covering 100 gates, 10 baggage carousels, 15 kiosks, and 5 operational client stations in 8 languages. For each language we provided prerecorded voice libraries which underwent regular updates and maintenance.
The technical upgrade involved introducing a completely new system while retaining all functions and minimizing disruption to employees' workflows and processes. The old and new systems ran in parallel over a short period of time to ensure a smooth transition. This step-by-step migration to the new system was greatly appreciated by the airport, as downtime is almost impossible at such an exposed airport.
As for voice announcements, the original 8 voice libraries with prerecorded announcements by voice talents have been migrated to the new system. With the new system, the airport has the possibility to use Text-to-speech announcement with incorporated flight variables that are integrated in the system. This new technology is a huge improvement in the world of voice announcement. The TTS tool is operated together with the original 8 voice libraries. A continuous transition to the more flexible TTS tool is underway. A big challenge during the project was to integrate with the original Bosch public address system which is at the end of its life cycle.
Besides the challenges which such a major technology upgrade takes, we want to highlight some important features the airport is using:
Gate Announcements
With the Gate User Interface, a role-based UI for gate agents, YVR is handling the boarding process on its gates. The application has a ready to use sequence of boarding announcements with a simple navigation and the option to trigger also Live calls within the public address system zones.
Baggage Hall Announcements
Using this role-based user interface, airport personnel can trigger announcements with fight information, to keep passengers informed about baggage collection during the arrivals process. YVR has taken the opportunity of configuring the BaggageUI for airline-specific belts as well as per belt/position. The UI allows agents to filter flights by airlines.
Automated System Behavior
With our robust automation tool, we customized the validation and automatic playback of voice announcements in YVR to match their experience and needs. This allows us to optimize the number of announcements played for a flight and reduce airport staff effort as well as possible human errors.
Text-to Speech Editor
The importance and quality of text-to speech announcements has a massive trend giving customers more flexibility and adjustability to their needs. With our TTS editor, YVR has powerful tool to instantly create and play almost human like announcements with flight variables.
Conclusion
All in all, we are proud to have successfully upgraded Vancouver International Airport’s voice announcement system, running the old and new systems in parallel for a short period of time to ensure a smooth transition. The upgraded system has improved the process of voice announcements preparation, we implemented our Text-to-speech editor, set automated system behavior and finetuned role-based user interfaces for gate and belt operations.