My key takeaways on the 2.5 days I have spent at the Passenger Terminal Expo Conference 2025:
Beside the conference itself, my personal favorite impressions have been:
- the beauty of Madrid, with its friendly people, perfect weather and walkable city center
- the perfect conference venue: A compact central foyer on the conference floor and the open courtyard between the two halls, with its cafés. Probably the most convenient venue layout I ever experienced on a PTE!
- The amazing Arup rooftop party on Tuesday evening!
My two key takeaways from the conference:
- Best architecture presentation: The update on CPK (new central airport of Poland) by Filip Czernicki (CPK Project Director) and Antoinette Nassopoulos-Erickson (Foster+Partner). Very impressive to see how the project developed since the competition design. In my view, it became much more pragmatic and buildable.
- Most inspiring speech: the clear strategic view on future of airport development by Paul Griffiths (CEO, Dubai Airport). I especially liked his statement that „airports must become as convenient and efficient like railway stations“ and „the challenge is to think airports from the future and work backwards from this vision“
The most thought provoking moments I experienced:
- listening to any statement on AI…reminds me strongly of what we heard 10–15 years ago about digital solutions on airports: Everybody talks about theoretical chances, nobody about practical solutions
- As the presenters from Amazon and Microsoft stated: If you want to successfully implement AI, you need to 1) reshape your business process 2) getting access to actual and accurate date 3) share data between all stakeholders. Exactly the points most airports are still struggling with!
- I also asked myself if the Europe-centric organization of PTE isn’t a bit outdated. I believe the venue should be held on a different continent every year. Instead, PTE plans to held two venues from next year, in Europe and in Singapore. I am worried that this might be the end of a worldwide gathering
