A survey earlier this week showed how passengers feel about the use of mobiles and the web on flights - and now tech provider SITA has looked at mobile trends in airports.
The annual SITA-Air Transport World passenger self-service survey found the number of passengers carrying smartphones has almost doubled in the past 12 months, jumping from 28% to 54%.
The figure soars to 74% of business and first class passengers and frequent flyers, with exactly three quarters of passengers passing through the world's busiest airport, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, carrying one.
SITA-ATW spoke to nearly 2,500 passengers at Abu Dhabi International Airport, Beijing International Airport, Frankfurt International Airport, Mumbai International and Sao Paulo Guarulhos.
The combined passenger numbers for the airports reached 283.5 million last year.
Highlights of survey:
- 73% would like to use mobile boarding passes, with 17% already having done so.
- Almost a quarter (23%) have used Bluetooth connections at an airport.
- Around a third (33%) use mobiles to check in - 36% for business and first class passengers.
- Over 50% of business and first class receive SMS text messages for alerts.
- Four out of five do NOT want to receive information about shopping deals at airports, although passengers at Abu Dhabi (34%), Beijing (32%) and Mumbai (30%) do.
- 75% of smartphone users would connect to a free wifi network at an airport and are generally looking to access trip-related information.
- The most popular activity when connected at the airport is information on flights (77%), security (50%), departure gate walking times (40%), directions (21%) and airport parking (21%).