The pandemic sped up the transformation, the report found. workers would lose their jobs to automation by 2030. In February, the McKinsey Global Institute predicted that 45 million U.S. The country, and indeed the world, is clearly headed for an extraordinary wave of robotization and automation - and not just in travel. The new technologies mean “the passengers themselves take care of most of the administration,” as one industry consulting firm put it, reducing the need for paid humans in many traditional roles. But for travelers, “Do the work yourself” is the new mantra. LAX officials insist that in most cases, these automation changes don’t mean fewer jobs, often because new ones are being created in the process. But while automation is clearly good for corporations and is presumably good for consumers, how is it for the baggage handlers? The revolution in computing, robotics and artificial intelligence offers extraordinary benefits that only fools would reject out of hand. There’s nothing new about it or inherently wrong with it. How long before pilots are replaced by robots that fly planes more safely? Workers are scarce at the parking garages too, what with the ticket-dispensing machines, free-standing pay stations and automated gates. Outside the terminal, passengers called for Ubers without the help of taxi dispatchers, and then were met by cars that we all know will soon drive themselves. Instead I was struck by how superfluous human workers are to the process. Or, conversely, I could have been exhilarated by the technological wonder of it all. I probably should have been disturbed by the sci-fi creepiness of facial recognition. That means I gained 39 extra seconds to help offset the agonizing 20 minutes or more of crawling through traffic to get out of LAX and onto city streets.) Customs and Border Protection says machine identification cuts the processing time of a typical Global Entry passenger by almost 90%, from 45 seconds to less than 6 seconds. At the end, I handed a piece of paper to a guy who barely looked at it, saying only, “Welcome home.” The ID was done through “biometric facial comparison technology” and involved no fingerprints, no passports, no questions. The machine took a photo of me, identified me from the image and OKd me for entry into the country. (Will that help reduce the number of bags delayed, damaged or lost each year - 24.8 million of them in 2018?)Ĭoming back through passport control at LAX, I stopped at yet another self-service kiosk. I can’t be sure, but based on what I’ve read, it’s possible that at both airports, my suitcase was conveyed to the plane not by workers but by robots. This is what the industry calls a “ self-service bag drop solution.” Returning home from Frankfurt, Germany, I printed my own luggage tags from a machine and then hoisted my bag myself onto an unmanned conveyor belt, where it was security-checked by a machine rather than a person and sent on its way. I merely scanned it and walked through an automatic turnstile, with no one present to check on me. It was the first time I didn’t hand my boarding pass to a human as I filed onto the plane.