Host & General ModeratorMiriam SchönrockHead of Marketing · GATE
Opening GATE FUTURE with the official welcome address. As Managing Director of Hamburg Airport, Berit Schmitz brings the perspective of one of Germany's major international gateways – setting the stage for two days of dialogue on the future of aviation.
Offering strategic insights into the future of airports and aviation – one of Europe's most influential airport executives speaks to the challenges and opportunities ahead. As CEO of Fraport AG, he oversees one of the world's leading airport operators, with Frankfurt Airport at its core and a portfolio spanning four continents.
As General Manager of ADV – the German Airports Association – Ralph Beisel represents the interests of Germany’s airports in politics, industry and society. He brings the sector-wide view on what airports need to stay competitive: workable regulation, investment in infrastructure and digitalisation, and a credible path to climate-neutral aviation.
As President of GATE – The Airport Technology Network, Kay Bärenfänger represents more than 120 companies shaping airport technology across Europe and beyond. In his day job he leads airport business at AMMEGA, which gives him a supplier’s clear-eyed view of what airports really need to make innovation land in operations.
Sharing how mindful innovation – not technology for its own sake – shapes the airport of the future. As Chief Innovation Officer at CVG, Brian oversees the Innovation, IT and Customer Experience divisions, turning the airport's 7,700-acre campus into a lab of advanced research. Under his stewardship CVG became the first airport in the world to trial and deploy a range of cutting-edge technologies, creating new efficiencies, revenue streams and economic value for the region.
Claus Grunow leads Baden-Airpark GmbH and Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport (FKB). Previously Vice President Corporate Strategy & Digitalization at Fraport AG and a senior executive at Deutsche Bahn, he brings a sharp perspective on how regional airports can turn digitalisation and climate-friendly aviation into a workable strategy.
As Managing Director of Hamburg Aviation, Michael Vollrath leads one of Germany's most dynamic aviation clusters – bridging airlines, airports, aerospace industry and research to shape the future of aviation in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region.
As Managing Director of GATE – The Airport Technology Network, Jens Reinhard connects the airport supply industry with operators, research and policy. He is the driving force behind GATE FUTURE and brings the network’s perspective on what it takes to move airport technology from idea into everyday operations.
As General Manager of Fraport TAV Antalya Airport, Dr. Frank Quante leads one of the Mediterranean's leading tourism gateways and Turkey's second-busiest airport for international traffic. A lawyer by training with extensive experience across the Fraport Group – including five years as CEO of Fraport Twin Star in Bulgaria – he brings the operator's perspective on scaling infrastructure, sustainability and passenger experience at one of Europe's fastest-growing airports.
Explore how the airports of tomorrow are being designed architecturally, developed strategically, and enabled through technology – from masterplanning to digital infrastructure.
A focus on digital services, emerging technologies, and the next generation of passenger experience – from AI-driven operations to seamless travel journeys.
Addressing the evolving landscape of airport security – from perimeter protection and cyber resilience to emerging surveillance technologies and regulatory frameworks.
Exploring the energy transition in aviation and airports – from sustainable fuels and hydrogen infrastructure to ground electrification and net-zero airport operations.
Curated, practitioner-led sessions where technology partners and airports tackle real operational challenges together – from AI-driven ground operations to passenger well-being and sustainable equipment pooling.
A digital interface between baggage handling and fleet management – a kind of “Uber” for ground handlers. Developed with Heathrow and its handlers and heading into live testing, presented as an open session on the story and the solution.
Sharing ground support equipment across handlers – transparently and reliably. A first-hand look at the centralised non-motorised pool at Düsseldorf with 700+ units, SmartFLEET telematics, and the trust framework that makes it work.
Geometrically accurate digital twins linked to real process models, now evolved into an AI-supported forecasting tool across operational, tactical and strategic horizons – developed with Cologne Bonn Airport, with a clear look at cost, benefit and return.
Motional Digital Twin – powered by Physical AI and 3D LiDAR – continuously captures 3D spatial data for unmatched visibility into how people and vehicles really move, improving efficiency, passenger experience and safety. With deployment examples from major international airports.
Pushback is one of the apron's most safety-critical processes. Using Hamburg Airport's move toward single-operator pushback with Evitado's ELVIZ hazard awareness as a live case study, this interactive session maps the path from digital assistance to higher automation – building a shared Pushback Automation Roadmap.
The Chronolite approach: adaptive, science-based lighting across the full passenger journey – terminal to aircraft – to reduce stress and jet lag, and turn lighting from infrastructure into a strategic experience tool.
Lufthansa Industry Solutions complements Ericsson and Wittra as the system integration partner, bringing extensive aviation connectivity expertise and a strong track record of real-world airport use cases. With LEAP, a proven data integration platform, LHIND transforms connectivity and location data into actionable Location Intelligence and AI-driven operational insights.
An inconspicuous, discontinued electronic component fails – and suddenly a critical Baggage Handling System (BHS) or Passenger Boarding Bridge comes to a standstill. In the highly complex infrastructure of modern airports, obsolescence is a massive risk to passenger flow, safety, and operational budgets.
In this interactive, practitioner-led workshop, Airbus and INspares join forces to show you how to exit the expensive 'firefighting' mode. We will demonstrate how proven obsolescence management frameworks from aircraft manufacturing can be successfully adapted for airport operations. Following a strategic overview of lifecycle management and smart procurement solutions, participants will engage in a hands-on "Airport Asset Risk Map" exercise. Working in small groups, you will evaluate realistic airport scenarios, assess business impacts, and discuss strategic management decisions to sustainably secure your operational resilience.
In the first part, we’ll showcase the use of VIRTUAL TWINS at airports to market a wide variety of areas, such as: airport advertising, retail, food and beverage, event venues, real estate, etc. These 3D models are also used for HR and wayfinding, and the data can be utilized for social media campaigns. Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden Airport has been using the tool produced by GPIXS for over a year, and we’re happy to demonstrate its various functions.
The second part deals with the highly complex topic of the DIGITAL TWIN. Airports are among the most complex infrastructure systems of our time – buildings, technical systems, security zones, traffic flows, construction projects, maintenance, ESG requirements and regulatory audit obligations are constantly intertwined, while the information needed to manage them is scattered across plans, audit reports, CAFM systems, GIS data, BIM models, spreadsheets, photos and project documentation. The session explores how airports can turn these heterogeneous data sets into a connected, spatially referenced basis for decision-making: the digital twin as an operational data model for facility management, renovation planning, construction progress monitoring, security, safety inspections, defect management, reporting and, in future, simulations such as visitor flow or capacity analyses. Together with the participants, specific airport use cases will be prioritized, relevant data sources identified, and a pragmatic vision for an “Airport Intelligence Layer” developed.
Especially in the very dynamic environment of Ground Handling processes, it is extremely important to have a correct and consistent logging of the process executions, but at the same time extremely difficult to obtain these correct process traces under productive circumstances. We first showcase some common pitfalls of where timestamps can become erroneous or go missing during the ground handling and would like to exchange with the audience on their experiences on this topic.
To optimize the personell and resource disposition and make insightful analyses, it is essential to have a trustful and consistent data foundation. In the current form, this is not available, which clearly highlights the current pain point. To solve this, we trained different kinds of AI algorithms to impute missing timestamps, detect wrongly set timestamps and impute those as well. In the workshop we will walk through the different steps that we took to improve the data quality and train the AI models. More specifically we will explain in-depth, how we fine-tuned a Small Language Model (SLM) on this task, as the SLM provides the best performance and gives the most reliable and accurate predictions for imputation and detection of erroneous timestamps.
At last, we will get into discussion with the audience to exchange about optimization potential of this approach and also scaling this approach to other data quality-based challenges in the aviation.
The digitalisation of modern airports brings major efficiency gains – but as IT and OT systems become increasingly intertwined, from baggage handling and building automation to safety-critical command-and-control, the demands on cybersecurity, access control and the protection of critical infrastructure keep rising. This workshop covers IT/OT convergence at airports, secure remote access and zero-trust approaches, the protection of critical infrastructure and OT networks, cybersecurity risks in airport operations, network segmentation and access controls, and compliance with NIS2 and regulatory requirements – rounded out with best practices and practical solutions.
Airports are more than infrastructure. They are places of anticipation, connection, discovery, and human interaction. Every journey creates moments that shape how people feel, remember, and experience travel.
In this workshop, we explore the airport through the eyes of both passengers and staff to uncover opportunities for creating seamless, meaningful, and memorable experiences.
In a short, interactive discussion, participants jointly assess infrastructure-based marshalling as a stepping stone toward autonomous apron operations – weighing the potential benefits for safety and efficiency, the technical and operational requirements, limitations and regulatory considerations, the preconditions for an infrastructure-based approach, and hybrid models that combine vehicle-based and infrastructure-based solutions. Attendees leave with practical ideas for initial implementation.
Travel by passengers with reduced mobility (PRM) keeps growing. This interactive session shows how data-driven decisions, machine learning and AI-supported dispatching can improve PRM services – cutting waiting times, optimising coordination across the airport and making the journey smoother, more transparent and more inclusive.
Beyond the vision: a five-step framework for operationalising AI in complex, regulated organisations. Featuring the Lenze transformation as a working case study, plus a guided self-assessment for participants.
As airports face increasing demands for safety, operational continuity, and resilience against evolving security threats, traditional perimeter protection systems are reaching their limits. This workshop explores the next generation of intelligent airport security based on the fusion of LiDAR and camera technologies. By combining the precise 3D spatial awareness of LiDAR with the rich contextual information provided by visual imaging, sensor fusion enables highly reliable detection, classification, and tracking of intrusions while significantly reducing false alarms caused by wildlife, weather, or environmental factors.
A practical reality check on cutting CO₂ and OPEX in baggage handling. Moving beyond theory, the session combines real project data, operational experience and proven use cases to show where energy is actually consumed and which technical and operational levers deliver measurable savings. Short expert impulses, real-world examples and an open discussion round – with room to test your own assumptions against industry peers and leave with transferable recommendations for your airport.
How leading airports across Europe, North America, APAC and MEA are driving digital transformation to improve operational efficiency, passenger experience and data-driven decision-making. Participants gain a worldwide perspective on current digitalization trends, review best-in-class examples and discuss what German airports can learn from international frontrunners. A key focus is the identification of implementation roadblocks – data strategy, IT architecture, governance, organisational silos, vendor ecosystems and regulatory constraints – with interactive exercises to assess barriers and define actionable pathways for the DACH airport environment.
In a volatile operating environment, airports have to avoid staffing bottlenecks, safeguard service quality and become more attractive as employers at the same time. The workshop shows how modern scenario planning and more precise demand forecasting help to simulate different traffic and operational scenarios early and to take well-founded staffing decisions. Using practical examples, the session discusses how more individual shift models for employees can be combined with operational stability – focusing on concrete questions from daily airport operations: how to better model demand shifts, peak times or short-notice disruptions, how planners can compare options faster, and how this produces workforce planning that is both more resilient and more employee-friendly. Participants gain insight into methods, typical challenges and a structured approach to making airport workforce planning fit for the future.
Automated inspection and monitoring technology has proven itself in airport trials, but moving from a successful pilot to daily operations raises a different set of questions: who is in charge of the fleet, how many robots are actually needed, and how does it fit into schedules and systems that already exist. In this session, we will walk through the technology and share real examples from airports we’ve worked with. The second part is a working discussion: we want to hear how your airport runs inspections today, and the challenges that might arise in bringing this technology into your operations.
Wildlife strikes remain one of aviation’s most persistent safety risks. In this workshop, Flox Intelligence shares what we are learning from Edge AI units deployed at airports and other critical infrastructure across Europe and North America: how on-device AI detects and identifies wildlife in real time, deters it using species-specific bioacoustics, and what the resulting data reveals about wildlife behaviour around airfields. We will walk through real deployment cases at Denver Intl airport, GRR Intl airport, Midamerica airport and others, discuss how airports can integrate continuous AI monitoring & adaptive intelligent deterrence into their wildlife hazard management programs, and close with an open discussion on operational and regulatory considerations.
Rethinking real-time access: what happens when traditional access concepts meet the dynamics of a modern airport operation? When five different service providers, crews and systems must work together seamlessly within just 35 minutes, yet access logic still originates from a static world? The workshop moves away from rigid roles and isolated badge systems towards an intelligent, policy-driven identity fabric that makes decisions in real time.
Using the turnaround of a Boeing 737 as a practical use case – crew change, cleaning, catering, refuelling and ground handling all at once – the session examines how Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) and edge technology bring decision-making directly to the jet bridge, gate or apron entry: who is permitted, where, when and why. Together we explore the transition from fragmented badge systems to an integrated identity fabric, how policy-as-code enables transparency, auditability and speed, how edge controllers decide autonomously even during system outages, and concrete implementation steps from short-term to strategic.
There’s even more around the conference: join exclusive guided tours at Airbus and the ZAL Center of Applied Aeronautical Research in Hamburg on Tuesday – a rare look behind the scenes of aviation innovation.
© Airbus
© ZAL
21 – 22 October 2026 · Flughafenstraße 1–3, 22335 Hamburg · Right inside the terminal at one of Germany's largest civil aviation hubs – the venue embodies the industry the conference convenes.
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All tickets include access to all sessions, congress materials, catering and networking events. All prices excluding VAT.
Position your company as a driver of aviation innovation. GATE FUTURE unites 250+ senior decision-makers, airport executives and technology leaders – giving your brand direct access to the people shaping tomorrow's airports.
