Jeremy Klammer of the cannabis-focused digital signage firm GreenScreens sent me a bunch of photos of the upgrades now active in the Great Hall at Denver’s sprawling airport – with a focus on how digital signage is now central to the check-in experience.
The area where travelers do self-service check-in and bag drop for United Airlines (Denver is a big-time hub for United) has a long, wide set of video walls going around a corner that locate and guide a process that starts with nearby kiosks.
The set-up is a little reminiscent of what was done at the airline counters in Orlando, but this appears to use fine-pitch 2.5mm LED as the display surface (Orlando is an endless ribbon of tiled LCDs).
Something similar is taking shape in the Southwest Airlines area and Jeremy included a photo of the American Airlines – which retains the original airport set-up. The airport’s upgrades pages go into details about the project, which stretches into 2024 (I get a sense airports are ALWAYS doing renos), and it doesn’t look like American will see these screens added as part of this project.
This sort of thing is great because it provides flexibility and what’s on the screen is very likely tied in to passenger flow and baggage systems – so that if a bag drop position is out of service, the screen can note that (instead of somebody sticking on a sheet of paper, or just forcing people to figure it out). With time, it’s reasonable to think this sort of thing will be common in upgrades and new builds.
UPDATE: Kevin Palmeter, as you will see in the comments, says these are Daktronics screens.
Denver replaced all 4 ticketing pods during a renovation of the Great Hall. Each Ticketing pod LED display is nearly 180′ long with a 90 degree bend. The customer selected 2.5 which was a great choice for the average viewing distance and helped balance cost.
What’s great about this application is it finally enables common use ticket counters. Common use has been around for years allowing any airline to use any of the terminals at the counter. The problem was the static signage which made it a month’s long and permanent process to switch counters. With the full LED backwall, the airport can expand or contract airline space based on flight scheduled or increased routes as needed and on demand!