Shanghai Hongqiao Airport’s Terminal 1 has reopened after three years of renovation, becoming the first airport in China to offer full self-service options for domestic flights at check-in, security and boarding.
Passengers on both international and domestic routes can use any of 28 self-service check-in kiosks in T1’s Section D to print boarding passes and luggage tags after scanning their passports or ID cards. The terminal also features eight facial-recognition security lanes that process travelers in about 12 seconds each, with 20 additional self-service gates available for boarding.
Travelers who prefer human assistance can choose from six staffed check-in counters instead of the kiosks.
The systems are already in use: on a recent morning, Spring Airlines reported that 86 percent of 2,239 passengers used the self-service options, and peak morning wait times at staffed check-in counters were under three minutes.
Shanghai Hongqiao Airport is the seventh-busiest airport in China by passenger traffic. Terminal 1 handles roughly 10 million passengers a year, while the airport’s two terminals together serve about 40 million travelers annually.
Other upgrades completed as part of the renovation include increasing parking bays from 700 to 1,250 and expanding duty-free retail space to around 2,000 square meters.