AUTONEWS

How cellphone data can improve the travel experience at airports

Every time a traveler’s phone pings a cell tower, it leaves a tiny digital footprint.  

A new international study co-authored by a Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences researcher shows those footprints, multiplied by millions, can help airports predict passenger surges before they happen, and cut the congestion and emissions that come with them.

The study, published in Business Strategy and the Environment, used more than 9 million anonymized mobile network signals collected around Lisbon Airport in Portugal to build a forecasting model that outperformed standard prediction methods by double-digit margins, cutting forecast errors by up to 24%.

Babak Taheri, Ph.D., professor and associate department head of graduate programs in the Arch H. Aplin III ’80 Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management and Tourism, was part of the research team, along with faculty from Molde University College in Norway and Inov Inesc in Portugal.

“Lisbon was a strong test case because it brings together many of the challenges airport managers deal with every day,” Taheri said. “It has high passenger volumes, strong seasonal peaks, a mix of domestic and international travelers, and real pressure on capacity, congestion and ground transportation.”

With global air travel expected to keep growing, researchers say anonymized mobile data could become a valuable tool for sustainable airport planning. (Sam Craft/Texas A&M AgriLife)

From data to decisions...The team tracked anonymized, aggregated signals from mobile devices across 119 grid cells covering the airport’s footprint over a full year, then fed the patterns into a forecasting model built on Prophet, a time-series tool suited to capturing seasonal swings and holiday effects. Any grid-and-time slice with fewer than 10 devices was excluded, and no individual users could be identified.

What sets the study apart is what happens after the forecast. The research team translated those projections directly into potential operational decisions. Their forecast showed how the Lisbon Airport could use the information to determine how many security lanes to open, how many staff to schedule and how much to shorten the intervals between metro trains.

Babak Taheri, Ph.D., professor and associate department head of graduate programs in the Arch H. Aplin III ’80 Department of Hospitality, Hotel Management and Tourism, with a student in department’s Digital Transformation Lab, is researching how anonymous cellphone data can help airports anticipate passenger surges, improve operations and reduce emissions. (Michael Miller/Texas A&M AgriLife)

Under the scenarios modeled, better-coordinated staffing and transit schedules could reduce ground-transport congestion and associated emissions by 14-26% during peak travel periods.

“Telling an airport manager that passenger demand may increase by a certain percentage is only partly useful,” Taheri said. “Telling them what that could mean for staffing or the number of security lanes makes the information much more actionable.”

With global air travel expected to keep growing, researchers say anonymized mobile data could become a valuable tool for sustainable airport planning--image above (Sam Craft/Texas A&M AgriLife)

The model isn’t perfect. For example, it underestimated actual passenger counts during a June 2023 spike, a gap that Taheri said underscores why forecasts should inform planning ranges rather than serve as a single guaranteed number.

“There will always be days or periods when actual demand moves outside expectations,” he said.

International passenger flows also proved harder to predict than domestic ones, likely because they’re shaped by holiday calendars, economic conditions and other factors across multiple countries.

This finding points to combining mobile data with flight schedules and weather data for sharper forecasts, Taheri said.

A model for other hubs...With global air travel projected to grow by the billions over the next two decades, the researchers argue mobile network data is an underused asset for sustainability-minded airport management.

Taheri cautioned, however, that the approach isn’t plug-and-play.

“Every airport has its own passenger mix, terminal layout, transfer traffic and seasonal patterns, so the model would need to be trained and calibrated using local data,” he said.

The staffing and security thresholds outlined in the study haven’t yet been tested in live operations.

“The current study has not yet been deployed as a live airport operating system,” Taheri said. “What we have demonstrated is that the data and forecasting can be translated into decisions airport managers recognize and act on. The logical next step is an industry pilot where we test those decisions in real time, measure what works and refine the system with airport operators.”

If validated in real-world operations, the approach could give airports a new tool to anticipate pressure points before terminals and transportation network become congested.

Cellphones improve the airport travel experience by providing anonymized location footprints and real-time connectivity that allow operators to predict crowd surges, optimize staffing, and eliminate terminal friction.According to a September 2026 international study co-authored by researchers at Texas A&M University, cell tower pings from passenger phones can reduce forecasting errors by up to 24%. This helps airports handle congestion before it bottlenecks the traveler's journey

Predictive crowd management & logistics:

-Surge forecasting: By analyzing millions of anonymized network signals, airports can anticipate passenger volume hours in advance.

-Actionable staffing: Instead of guessing traffic, managers can use data to calculate exactly how many security lanes to open.

-Transit coordination: Better-aligned bus, taxi, and train schedules can cut ground-transport congestion by 14% to 26% during peak hours

Streamlining the terminal experience:

-Digital identities: Travelers can bypass traditional checkpoints using securely stored mobile biometrics and state-issued digital IDs via platforms like Apple Wallet or Google Wallet, authorized by the TSA

-Virtual queuing: Some hubs now use cellphone location data and apps to let passengers reserve a spot in line virtually, freeing them from standing in physical queues.

-Indoor navigation: Bluetooth beacons push personalized, real-time wayfinding maps and localized store offers directly to a passenger's smartphone based on their exact terminal location

Behind-the-scenes airport operations:

-Faster aircraft turnaround: Cellular-connected systems immediately beam diagnostic data from landing aircraft to ground crews, speeding up maintenance and reducing flight delays

-High-density 5G network support: Next-generation 5G connectivity keeps passenger transactions, boarding pass scans, and real-time gate updates moving seamlessly even inside heavily crowded terminals.

Texas A&M College of Agriculture and Life Sciences researcher