Airport Tracks Your Cell Phone To Predict Wait Times

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Helpful tool or just another reason to turn your cell phone off when you fly?

The wait times are driven by beacons that anonymously monitor passenger’s mobile devices as they move through the airport. The BlipTrack solution, invented by Denmark-based BLIP Systems and installed by Lockheed Martin, detects Bluetooth or Wi-Fi devices in “discoverable” mode, found in mobile phones and tablets.
 
I have run into this in a few airports now. It works decently well and the examples I have run into have signs notifying users that it is being used and how to doge being included. That said, I imagine the notifications will not last and eventually they will do it without telling you. They do of course miss the obvious solutions to the wait time problems.
 
Did someone say doge?

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What they really need to track is total travel time, from the moment you arrive at the airport to the moment you pick up your bags. Direct flights are virtually non-existent anymore, as are on-schedule trips. I would so much rather buy tickets based on real travel time than how long I think my layover is going to be.
 
Direct flights are virtually non-existent anymore,

Um, no. First, you don't understand the difference between direct and non-stop. Second, you don't understand the difference between flying from a hub versus a spoke to a hub versus a spoke. Third, you don't understand multihubbing for gateways and banking flights. Fourth, you apparently never flew before the 1990's. The itineraries we used to fly to get places would boggle your mind between backtracking on feeders, overnight or multiday layovers, airport changes between cities, multimode transport, etc. were extraordinarily common. The idea that I should be able to get on a plane in ass nowhere and fly directly to ass nowhere in another country has never been a reality, and complaining that an airline dropped some long thin routes from a a hub to a spoke or from a P2P connection does not validate "virtually non-existent anymore" as those have never been common by number of flights, passengers enplaned, RSM, etc.
 
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