June 5, 2020

Airports: Reopening with a renewed focus on cleaning and sanitizing

The world has seen numerous changes since the global spread of the coronavirus. Businesses have been forced to adapt, employing stricter rules and regulations. The aviation industry, which has been one of the hardest hit, has seen some of the most drastic changes. Passengers must now arrive — alone and wearing masks — with sufficient time to be screened via temperature checks, being mindful to stay 6 feet apart with guidance from the newly-placed floor markers. While travel has slowed to a crawl, the economy will recover and people will resume their world adventures once again. But first, they need to feel safe.

Cleaning and sanitizing have been brought out of the shadows and are now front and center in many industries including aviation; it was never perceived to be a glamorous job, but people have come to realize it is, in fact, hazardous. With an increased focus on the safety of passengers, crew and employees, the need to provide thorough, frequent cleaning is a top priority for airports and airlines. The ability to provide adequate sanitization poses multiple challenges — one of the largest being the time-consuming nature of in-depth cleaning.

When a passenger enters CVG Airport in Hebron, Kentucky, they're greeted by Neo, the autonomous floor scrubbing robot. While CVG purchased a Neo unit just prior to the pandemic, its value increased significantly when the virus hit. Having doubled passenger traffic over the last several years, CVG was seeing thousands of people enter its doors.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, traffic has decreased significantly but cleaning needs have not. CVG, along with airports such as Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport and Hong Kong Airport, are using Neo to increase their cleaning team’s efficiency and effectiveness. While the human team members are able to focus on 3-D areas that require human dexterity to disinfect (such as handrails and doorknobs), their robotic counterpart, Neo, takes care of the largest surface area — the floors.

Airports around the world, including 5 of the top 10 at the prestigious 2020 World Airport Awards by Skytrax, regularly clean and sanitize their facilities with Neo. Additionally, Neo is busy sanitizing at the world’s cleanest airport, Haneda in Tokyo.

Neo cleans and sanitizes more airport floors than any other autonomous scrubber in the world.

With studies showing the coronavirus lives on surfaces for a duration of anywhere from hours to days and can be spread via shoes, sanitizing floors is as important as any other area of an airport. The amount of time it takes to manually perform this duty was already cumbersome. With the increased frequency due to COVID-19, it has become unmanageable. It’ll be imperative that airports change how they clean and the frequency of cleaning to regain the trust of passengers.

Please contact us to learn how you can implement Neo, the autonomous floor scrubber, at your airport, joining many of the leading airports around the globe in helping to offset the increased need for cleaning and sanitization as you work to regain passenger trust.
 

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