EADS Altran airport of the future

EADS claims that by 2050 they'll have an airport system that will get you on your plane within ten minutes. 

Unless the authorities have wised up by then and either a) crushed the Jihadists so they no longer pose a threat or b) stopped making the transport system the first line of defence, I see security as the elephant in the middle of the ticketing hall.

Putting that aside, I doubt that being "friendlean" is the answer.  In fact, the idiots who use words like "friendlean" are as much a part of the problem as the "enemyfat" people.  What these over-designing designers fail to understand is that much of the problem is very simple.  Passengers don't want to be interacted with, they want to be listened to.  They don't want to be immersed, they want to get to their plane on time.  They don't want little blue touch screens, they want to get where they're going on time and intersecting with their luggage at the same space/time coordinates.  During this, they want to be treated like human beings, not have to lug their belongings down endless terminals like pack animals, not get molested by dead-eyed security guards, not to have to sit on the floor, not get bumped from flights, not suffer insane layovers that no one told them about, and, please God, be able to get a large pink G & T while waiting for the boarding announcements. 

Part of this will involve technical and logistical improvements that the passengers needn't and don't care to see.  Some of it will mean simply increasing the capacity of airports many times above what they are now to not only allow for more passengers, but also to increase the number of planes that can land and takeoff.  And some of it will mean rethinking air travel in an age of increasingly powerful computers that will allow smaller and smaller airports to take up the slack and change the system from one based only on a few hubs to one that includes many local "taxi" airports.  If we had the latter today, I could catch a plane at a local airfield only ten miles away.  If it included grass air strips, a mile and a half.

But what it really requires is a return to old-fashioned customer service.  We can't recapture the glory days of air travel except for those willing to pay the equivalent of the GDP of a small African nation for a ticket, but what we can do is make air travel not only tolerable, but actually enjoyable once again by treating passengers as what they are; customers who are there to be pleased, not unwelcome baggage to be shoved along.  Get them to where they want to be with a minimum of hassle and allow them to get a drink and a meal without feeling like the passengers of a Victorian railway carriage assaulting the refreshment bar at the station during a ten-minute rest stop.  And if the plane breaks down on the tarmac, for the love of heaven let the passengers off while you fix the bloody thing instead of having them wait in their horrid, cramped seats for five hours without toilets or so much as a glass of water while a dozen infants and toddlers scream in justified outrage.

You'll surprised at the results.

Finally, the following directives should be posted in all airport employee canteens and recited to the staff on a daily basis whilst beating them with rattan rods:

THIS IS AN AIRPORT, NOT A COACH STATION!  ACT ACCORDINGLY!

THESE ARE HUMAN BEINGS, NOT CATTLE!  ACT LIKE THEY PAY YOUR WAGES BECAUSE, GUESS WHAT, THEY DO!

YOU ARE NOT JUST ALLOWED, BUT EXPECTED TO USE DISCRETION AND COMMON SENSE!  DO IT!