Have you thought about how easy it is to travel from abroad to a smaller airport in Norway? Let's say you check in your luggage in London, make a stopover at Gardermoen, and pick up your luggage when you land at your final destination, for example in Kristiansand.  

Simple and smooth. Well, it wouldn't be so smooth without the Domestic Transfer feature. 

Before 2017, you had to check in your luggage and hope that the flight was not delayed, pick up your luggage when you landed at Gardermoen, take your luggage through customs and then check in again, rush through security and cross your fingers that the queue was not so long that you did not make your flight further.  

Business developer Simen Simonsen remembers this very well. He has over 26 years of experience in the airline industry, first at SAS, and the last 13 years at Avinor.  

Close collaboration with external environments 

Aleksandar is a system developer at Avinor, and works daily with the technology behind Domestic Transfer. He is very proud to work with a system that, apart from some integrations with external users used in the solution, is fully developed by Avinor.   

-The fact that we develop so many of our systems ourselves means that my working day is both exciting and varied. Domestic Transfer has a major impact on other important systems at the airport. There are always some requests for Domestic Transfer via Simen, either to introduce new features or make some changes. It's a good balance between maintaining and developing something new," says Aleksandar.  

One of the most exciting things about the job is the collaboration with external developer environments, he says: 

"We are working to connect more airlines to Domestic Transfer. I therefore work closely with various airlines and the Norwegian Customs. It is exciting to see how they develop their systems, and how they use our systems together with their own.

 

Fully automatic baggage 

Did you know that Norway was the first in the world to develop and launch self-service bagdrop 20 years ago? And that this system allowed us to avoid the delays and chaos that prevailed at other European airports during the corona years? 

Now there is a brand new baggage facility ready for use at Gardermoen. 20 new self-service baggage kiosks will increase capacity significantly and prevent queues on the most hectic days of departure.  

The challenge was that we had to increase capacity by at least 30 percent at the same time as traceability had to be improved, and this had to be made possible in the existing area at the airport," says Simen. 

In the new facility, which is the world's first of its kind, you put your luggage in what we call "tubs", or boxes if you will, which are sent in the baggage facility. Each "tube" is tracked so that you know where your luggage is at all times. You can check in many hours before departure. Your suitcase will be x-rayed and photographed, and then sent to the Dynamic Bag Store, which is a "baggage hotel", waiting to be loaded onto the plane. 

"Apart from the baggage vending machines themselves, the control system for the baggage facility and the systems the passengers see, all the support systems are "under the hood" developed by Avinor, says Simen. 

There is a lot of testing ahead of such a launch. During the summer, charter tourists and travelers with SAS and Thai Airways have used the system during the day, while Avinor's own developers have run tests at night, when the airport is empty of passengers. 

"It's a lot of fun to work with solutions that everyone knows about, and that make the travel experience so much better for people," says Aleksandar.  

Technology is becoming increasingly important

Technology is becoming an increasingly important part of Avinor. In the future, the developer community will use both AI and, to an even greater extent, cloud-based services. New employees will also have the opportunity to be involved in this work from the start, and thus be able to influence how Avinor's technology infrastructure is to be developed.  

-I have worked at Avinor for a year, and am taking a master's degree in information security alongside my job. I get a lot of support from management and colleagues, and I get to use the experience from the job in many of the subjects. There are a lot of exciting things happening in my field at Avinor. 

It is efficiency and quality at the airport that is one of the most important focus areas going forward. AI and a concept called Total Airport Management are important parts of it. 

Avinor is responsible for the airport and punctuality, overall. This means that we must work to get all actors to cooperate well. That includes ourselves, our suppliers and partners, which are everything from the airlines, to the ground handlers and security people. We will continue to be one of the world's most efficient airports, so there is a lot of exciting work ahead, both for us in business development and the developer environment," Simen concludes with a smile.