New-York City, John F. Kennedy International Airport, February 10th 2017. 9.00pm - “Attention to all passengers of the KLM flight KL0644: Due to the current bad weather conditions over the Atlantic your flight to Amsterdam Schiphol has been delayed to further notice. We expect the next flight to take-off tomorrow morning at 8.00am. KLM thanks you for your understanding and wishes you a pleasant night in John F. Kennedy International Airport.”
Such an announcement in 2009 would trigger a wave of panic and distress among travellers waiting for their flight, and a comment like “KLM [...] wishes you a pleasant night in John F. Kennedy International Airport” would be more than inappropriate considering the context.
Thanks God we’re in 2017 and Airports waiting lounge don’t look like what they looked in 2009.
For the past 10 years, engineers have been working on projects of small individual resting rooms which could provide travellers, moments of quiet sleep and rest from the city without wasting their time searching for a hotel. Such projects, like SLEEPBOX to name the most significant, have started to emerge a few years ago in places like Airports, Railroad stations, Expocentres, Accommodation facilities and even in Public and shopping centers.
Thanks to those revolutionary infrastructures, any person now has an opportunity to spend the night safely and cheaply in case of emergency, or when they have to spend a few hours waiting for their flight or train with their luggage. Most of those resting rooms provide their users with a basic service: a soft 2×0.6 m bed equipped with automatic change of bed linen system, a ventilation system, a built-in LCD TV screen, WiFi access, electric plugs with built in adaptors and a system that darkens all the windows of this pod to give its user a minimum intimacy. And it is possible to use the service from 15 minutes to several hours.
Just like those public restrooms we could find in many developed countries at the end of the last decade, those resting pods are fully automated. After the clients exit his room, automatic change of bed linen starts and quartz lamps turns green to report that the pod is clean and free for use. Payment can be made on a shared terminal, which provides the client with a disposable electronic key or access key sent to his smartphone.
Sleeping the night over in one of those rooms has turned, for most passengers, to be more convenient and cheaper than a regular hotel room. Since the majority of pods are located near boarding gates, passenger can wait until the very last moment to comfortably board their flight. An unforgettable night before an unforgettable flight on board one of KLM’s brand new WB-1010 “Spruce Whale”.
I can tell now that I don’t fear any more to book this 8am morning flight since I can spend the night on site.
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SLEEPBOX
Area: 3.75 m2
architects: Goryainov A., Krymov M.
Design: 2009 – Arch Group
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Too bad we’re only in 2009? Maybe, but at least you can tell one day your kids or grandchildren that once in your live you ended-up sleeping on a bench like a homeless.
Still need some info to spend a pleasant night in your favorite airport? Check The Guide to Sleeping in Airports, The worst, and best, airports to sleep in
Two schoolgirls from distant countries communicate using a clear white board that can do on-the-fly translation. A business man finds his way out of the airport to meet with his client, by following the big arrow displayed on the ground by his mobile built-in GPS. Working partners meet in a café and resume the project they’re working on, from the very surface of the table. Sounds familiar to you? 
BBC to know a little bit more about what was going one there.