Noida airport set for flight into the future

Designed to operate largely on automation and self-service

- YARUQHULLAH KHAN

WHEN NOIDA INTERNATIONAL Airport opens, it wants to do something radical for an Indian flyer: make itself almost invisible.

There will be no crush around check-in counters, no serpentine queues held together by retractable belts, no army of staff herding passengers from one checkpoint to the next. Instead, India’s newest greenfield airport is betting that software—not manpower—will run the show. Billed as the country’s first fully digital, mid-sized airport, Noida has been designed from scratch to operate largely on automation and self-service.

That “from scratch” part matters. Unlike Delhi, Mumbai or Hyderabad—where technology has been bolted on to decades-old processes—Noida has had the luxury of a clean slate. “The 10,000-crore airport has been built as the country’s first fully digital airport,” says Christoph Schnellmann,

CEO of Noida International Airport. A single master systems integrator, he explains, is stitching together everything from core IT and operational platforms to passenger-facing systems, ensuring they function as one integrated whole.