Sustainable Tourism Law

AIRPORT, CIVIL AVIATION AND TECHNOLOGY LEGAL RELATIONSHIP 781 In the airport legal relationship, there is a subject that, although it is not new, appears more and more as fundamental for the current airport and the future. We refer to the technology provider, the IT companies and all of the companies plus all those that will make up the Airport 4.0: intelligent, digital, automated and connected. These companies are the ones that link, more and more, the activities and information of the airlines, the providers of air navigation services, the handling operators, the airport operator, the passengers and the supervision agencies. In the global civil aviation ecosystem, and within it, in the airport ecosystem, all these subjects are connected. In the era of information and technology, this actor has been transformed, silently, into an indispensable subject for the operation and functioning of this entire ecosystem; including more and more the airport, where the quality of service or the experience of the passenger, are involved them a little more every day. They are very dynamic companies in terms of concentration, many of them with strong presence and commercial power in a market in full expansion, and that, have occupied a key place, of centrality, in the whole industry. In May 2017, British Airways canceled all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick due to a massive failure in its information systems, causing operational chaos, passenger fury and millionaire losses 12 . In August of that year, failures in the system of delivery of luggage in all departures, spoiled the vacations of thousands of passengers in the airport of Gatwick 13 . In September 2017, failures in the check-in system used by most airlines interrupted the operation of airports around the world. The disruption occurred at some of the busiest airports in the world, including Heathrow and Gatwick, Johannesburg, Changi in Singapore and airport Reagan National inWashington, Zurich and Melbourne 14 . With these simple examples we mean that here lies one of the great legal challenges of airport law, of the jurists who, from the different areas, are related to the airport activity: the technological dependence . Airport operators and regulators have already become aware of the benefits and progress that technology brings to the airport service in particular and the 12 See The Telegraph, May 28 2017. 13 See The Telegraph, August 21 2017. 14 http://www.airport-technology.com/news/newscheck-in-systems-failure-in-airports-across-the-world- causes-disruptions-5938276/. September 2017.