In many large international airports, digital kiosks locate your reservation, print your boarding pass and luggage tags, and they even try to sell you upgrades such as a better seat, and after you check in you can use an app on your smartphone to access a digital boarding pass, check the status of your flight and location of the boarding gate. You're waiting for your flight, you'll probably walk past several digital billboards, and may even use your smartphone to buy some wine from the duty free shop and have it delivered to your seat. We're here on this very windy day in front of Willard airport, which is owned by the University of Illinois here in Champaign, Illinois. At present, only one airline flies in and out of Willard, that's American Airlines, which has a grand total of two destinations, Chicago and Dallas, Texas. We're here to speak to Jean Cassie. Jean is the executive director of Willard airport. We're going to speak to him about the airport's operations, and how you might find more resistance to the digital here at a small town airport like Willard, you might find at a international airport such as Chicago O'Hare. Willard Airport is like many airports and communities this size, it's a what the FAA classifies as a primary non hub airport. We're around 200,000 passengers a year that come through Willard Airport. The majority of the customers that we have flying through the airport are business related travelers, either coming to the area to do business with the university, or one of the many other businesses that are in the community. Or they are professors or teachers or researchers from the university, or business members of the community who are traveling out for their work. The university is the owner and operator of the airport which is a rare event. There's not very many commercial service airports in the United States that are owned and operated by an organization such as the university. Jin's role as executive director is to take over all the business administration and operational administration of the airport. One of the biggest problems with marketing the airport is we don't really sell anything. The airline sells the product and we're just the facilitator of what they sell. The airline is an independent business that comes in and out of the airport, and we are essentially a landlord that provides facilities for them, and those facilities are the terminal building, parking, all the way out to the ramps and the runways and taxiways and everything they need to do their job. We don't want them driving to Chicago or driving to Indianapolis, we want them coming here and flying in and out of here. So we're marketing to the airlines themselves trying to tell them about the community, trying to tell them about the number of passengers we have that they could draw from, trying to tell them about the businesses that are here that will use them. So we're constantly before the airlines, marketing the community as well. So it's more than just selling to the customer it's also selling to the provider. Getting in and out of this airport is far easier than trying to drive from here to Chicago, dealing with the traffic in Chicago, paying the price of parking in Chicago, parking three miles away from the airport and still having to bus to the airport. Then, the hassle of the security, getting your baggage checked everything that you have to do. Here it's almost like you just waltz in. Our parking is right in the front door. Everything is premium parking. You come right in the front door, you talk right away with the customer service agent with the airline. You check your bag, you get through security in less than 10, 15 minutes even on the most busy flight. And then you have the convenience of waiting in a very small comfortable airport. Very first off, you're going to see a lot more of it at an airport like O'Hare. For instance, we have an advertising program in the building. One of the revenue sources that we use is to try to sell advertising within the building. We've got enough passengers coming in and out of the airport that we can market to the local community businesses to put their information here so that the people traveling through can know about the restaurants and the hotels and the car lots in town, those type of things. Historically, that's always been very analog advertising. The other thing that you see on the digital side is the ease of check in, using kiosks, having electronic boarding passes, those things have been in the larger airports for quite some time and of course they're just now really getting to be the mainstream in the smaller airports. The beauty of the smaller airports are they're still small enough, you can have the physical person checking you in, taking care of things for you. When the airlines first moved over to doing the kiosks and moving away from people, there was a lot of kickback from that. The kickback was at the bigger airports but at the smaller airports it was very vocal. People were upset about it. One of the things they would say is that the reason they like flying to the small airport is the personal service and somebody to help them right away. I think the biggest downside is when everything's not working the way it's supposed to work. So if there's a delayed flight or your flight got canceled. Now, the problem is because the airlines have moved away from having a large number of employees behind the counter ready to help you immediately with any problem. Now, there's less employees so it takes much longer to solve a problem. It takes much longer to redirect or reroute your flights, or get you a new boarding pass printed whatever it might happen. So the downside is really when there's a glitch in the system. And unfortunately, air travel is always going to be dependent on things such as weather, cancellations and delays in other areas. So there will always be times when you have a problem with your air travel. Many of them recognize everybody, know them by name. Know the frequent flyers by name. Chat with them on a regular basis. You're not going to find that with the machine and you're not going to find it at O'Hare either. So it's one of those things that does make flying in and out of here extremely unique. The cost to put in an automated system at an airport this size doesn't really meet up with the benefit that you get. The local staff of the airline ground handling people can still move the bags fast enough, that an automated system an airport the size really isn't going to be beneficial to us. Well, obviously, getting on board the aircraft, having to fly the distance in between point A and point B, the aircraft taking off and landing. All those things will always be an analog physical event, until we have that Star Trek world where we're all being transported on light beams, it's not going to change that aspect of it. Where we will continue to see more digitalization is the processing of the people through, almost to the point where eventually everything from the security process of the screening will start from the time you leave your house, a screening process will start. They'll know that you're on your way, they'll start running background checks on people who they need to run background checks on, there will be different ways of looking at vehicles as they get closer to the building as you walk through the building, there will be ways to monitor the people that are coming in and out doing behavioral recognition. So even the security process will get more digitalized as you go through, to the point that eventually you'll just be walking up towards the aircraft and all the scanning will happen very unobtrusively. That's probably a long ways away but it's still moving in that direction. I think the biggest factor that drives it is the airlines need to cut costs. So the investment up front of digitalizing their systems and automating their systems makes for long term cost cutting, which is mostly in the realms of personnel. The biggest driver of automation in baggage handling is efficiency, less bags get lost, bags are there on time, so the efficiency is really driving the baggage handling aspect of this, as far as the automation and digitalization of ticket sells, boarding passes. That's one of those things that makes it easier and less expensive for the customer to buy tickets and get on board aircraft. So that becomes a marketing emphasis for them, because if it's easier for you to buy a ticket, get to the airport, get on board than it ever has been in the past, you're more likely to travel via airline. I try to end most anything like this with just an emphasis on the needs small airports like this have of people to fly local. It's your local hometown airport, you need to really support it as much as you can. It's a valuable asset to your community, it's a valuable asset to your businesses. And if you want it to be successful, you want it to be viable, you need to choose to buy tickets and do your flying through your local airport. Its iflycu.com. We also have a huge presence on Facebook and other social media. And that's one of the things digital-wise we want to use and take advantage of those aspects of getting out to people on social media. Based on what you just learned about Willard Airport, answer the following questions.

First, which are the factors that Jean mentioned do you think are most important for the fact that Willard Airport is as digitized than a large international airport such as Chicago?

Second, what would have to change for Willard to become more digitized in the future?

Third, finally, what did you learn from this case about analog resistance to the digital world?