As air travel surges with nearly 1.1 billion passengers expected to navigate through EU airports in 2025—an increase of 4.8% from the previous year—ensuring a seamless and secure experience becomes the priority. Airports, as pivotal points in these journeys, face increased scrutiny and challenges as they strive to meet rising passenger expectations amidst evolving threats. These threats range from cyber-attacks and drone intrusions to unauthorized access and other safety concerns.
Addressing Increasing Complexity
In addition to external threats, the introduction of the EU Entry/Exit System (EES) is adding pressure on airport operations by complicating border processes and queue management. With the profitability of European airports averaging just €4.5 per passenger in 2025, leaders are focused on increasing efficiencies, expanding income sources, and enhancing non-aeronautical revenue streams such as retail and hospitality. Rapid adaptation is crucial to manage these complex variables while continuing to scale up to meet future demand.
Enhancing Daily Operations with AI
To efficiently tackle these issues, airports are increasingly relying on AI-powered video solutions, which offer increased security and operational insights. Traditionally, cameras served to document incidents post-event, but AI technology shifts the focus toward proactive management. This technology empowers security teams by alerting them to critical events and enabling strategic improvements to passenger experiences.
License Plate Recognition and Queue Management
Advanced video analytics, for instance, provides real-time insights into passenger flow
Advanced video analytics, for instance, provides real-time insights into passenger flow, allowing operators to manage queues more effectively by opening additional security checkpoints or redirecting passengers to less crowded areas. Outside the terminals, tools like license plate recognition help streamline traffic management, ensuring efficient vehicle movement for pick-up and drop-off.
With threats becoming more sophisticated, comprehensive monitoring and automatic alerts have become essential components of airport security. AI video surveillance highlights critical events and enables proactive responses, diminishing reliance on human operators for constant monitoring. The technology also facilitates rapid responses to situations like locating missing individuals based on detailed, video-sourced descriptions.
Detecting Anomalous Behavior
AI-powered video systems can identify suspicious activities such as loitering or unauthorized presence in restricted areas. In operational zones like baggage and cargo, these systems can quickly notify teams of incidents, improving both safety response times and record-keeping for regulatory compliance.
In instances of security breaches or operational disruptions, AI-driven forensic searches accelerate post-event investigations by utilizing video characteristics to track events and aid law enforcement if necessary. Beyond its role in surveillance, AI video serves a broader purpose in enhancing airport operational efficacy and ensuring enduring resilience.
Integrated System Benefits
AI-powered video systems are set to work in tandem with smart technologies
As airports increasingly embrace digital solutions, AI-powered video systems are set to work in tandem with smart technologies, optimizing processes like biometric boarding and automated baggage handling. For example, by integrating cameras that read barcodes, operators can track baggage more efficiently and maintain detailed visual records.
Video analytics also extend their utility to safety and efficiency in fleet maintenance areas by identifying potential hazards like Foreign Object Debris (FOD) or verifying compliance with safety protocols. Additionally, thermal imaging contributes by highlighting abnormal temperature changes, enabling preemptive responses to equipment failures and minimizing downtimes.
The integration of AI-powered video with expanding digital infrastructures supports a connected operational environment that enables informed, agile decision-making. As the global aviation industry grows, airports must leverage these intelligent systems to ensure safe, seamless journeys for passengers, aligning themselves with the modern traveler's expectations.
As millions of people jet off for their summer holidays or make their way home, airports are under increased scrutiny. For many, their eagerly awaited trip begins and ends in the airport.
Meeting passenger expectations with a seamless and secure journey from check-in to boarding is critical at a time when passenger numbers are rising, with almost 1.1 billion air passengers traveling through EU airports in 2025, an increase of 4.8% year-on-year.
Increased complexity ahead
But there are headwinds that airport leaders must navigate through. As critical infrastructure, airports are targets for malicious actors including insiders, cyber-attackers, terrorist groups, and more. Misuse of drone technology threatens the perimeter. Intruders may attempt access to restricted areas, including the airfield. Missing people, left luggage, theft, vandalism, and anti-social behavior are other challenges that teams have to respond to.
Moreover, the EU Entry/Exit System (EES) is adding pressure to border processing and queue management. Some airports are under pressure to increase capacity to meet future demand. Profitability and growth are other areas feeling the strain. European airports achieved a net profit of €11.8 billion in 2025, averaging just €4.5 per passenger. Leaders are being tasked with finding new efficiencies, diversifying income, attracting repeat passengers and driving more non-aeronautical revenue through retail, hospitality, car parking and advertising.
Improving daily operations
All of these challenges are interconnected. Accommodating more passengers, strengthening security and resilience in line with Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) requirements, and delivering a seamless experience all require airport teams to understand what is happening across the site in real time. Modern AI-powered video solutions provide that much-needed visibility. Helping leaders secure airports while improving daily operations and boosting the passenger experience.
Traditionally, cameras have been used at airports to monitor sites, record incidents, and provide evidence after an event has occurred. AI-powered video changes this, enabling security teams to take a more proactive approach to securing airport sites, assets, and passengers, while also delivering insights to inform strategy and improve the passenger experience.
License plate recognition
For example, advanced video analytics can identify queues and alert operators, allowing them to open additional check-in desks and security screening areas, or redirect passengers to quieter areas. Maintenance, cleaning and staffing schedules can also be adjusted around busier periods.
Outside the terminal, license plate recognition and dwell-time analytics can support traffic management, helping teams respond to congestion and direct vehicles to available areas for rapid pick-up and drop-off.
Increasingly complex threats
As for security, comprehensive oversight of all areas, supported by continuous monitoring and automatic alerts for objects or events of interest, is critical. This is particularly important as airports contend with increasingly complex threats, from incursion by drones and terrorism to unauthorized access. Rather than relying solely on human operators to monitor numerous screens, AI video surveillance highlights the most critical events requiring human input.
Proactive intelligence supports teams to intervene and respond to events requiring their attention quickly and with essential situational awareness using semantic and similarity search. For example, a missing child can be rapidly located with video footage searched based on what the child was wearing and where they were last seen. Similar footage can be brought up for investigation into their potential direction of travel.
Detecting unusual behavior
AI-powered video can also detect unusual behavior such as loitering, people or vehicles in unexpected locations or outside of opening hours, and stopped vehicles. In cargo and back-of-house environments, video analytics can identify events such as slips and falls and alert ground teams to respond.
There is also a compliance benefit. Comprehensive event logs can help airports maintain clearer records of incidents and safety activity, supporting reporting and providing evidence that appropriate procedures are being followed.
Post-event investigations
AI-powered forensic search can speed up post-event investigations by allowing operators to search footage using visual characteristics and similar attributes. That could help investigate a security incident or establish what happened during an operational disruption. If an investigation is escalated, relevant footage can also be shared with law enforcement.
AI-powered video is far more than a surveillance tool. It can support the wider business of running a safe, efficient and resilient airport, from managing passenger flows and protecting staff to responding to incidents and improving operational efficiency. As airports become more digitally connected, video can also work alongside other smart-airport technologies, from biometric boarding to automated baggage handling. Barcode-reading cameras, for example, can connect baggage and cargo identification data with video footage, helping operators locate items more quickly, investigate incidents and maintain a visual record of their journey through the airport.
Personal protective equipment
Video can also support both safety and operational efficiency in fleet maintenance areas. Analytics can help identify hazards such as Foreign Object Debris (FOD), monitor whether technicians are following safety procedures and wearing appropriate personal protective equipment, and detect slips and falls. Thermal imaging can also flag unusual temperature changes in equipment, providing an early warning of potential failures or fires. Acting on these alerts quickly can help prevent incidents, reduce unplanned downtime and inform preventative maintenance decisions.
Integrating AI-powered video with these technologies can create a more connected view across IT, physical security and operations, helping teams share information and make faster, better-informed decisions.
Airports are an integral part of the global economy, with passenger numbers set to continue growing as more people take to the skies. Meeting the needs and expectations of the modern traveler will require intelligent systems that give airport teams the information they need to respond in real time, so passengers can get on with what they came to the airport for: starting their journey.
