London, United Kingdom, 17 September 2026 – Allegra RMS, the resource management system built by AirportLabs, has been named an honoree in the user experience category of Fast Company's 2026 Innovation by Design Awards.

Fast Company is a US business publication covering innovation, technology, leadership, and design. Its Innovation by Design Awards are among the few international programmes that judge a product on the thinking behind it rather than its finish, with categories spanning transportation, workplace, health, packaging, and artificial intelligence. The user experience category, in Fast Company's own description, honours projects that consider a user's journey from beginning to end, whether in an app, a physical product, or a brick-and-mortar experience.

The honorees in that category this year include companies like Adobe, Google, and Framer. For a company that builds software for airport control rooms, that is an unusual company to keep, and welcome.

Being honoured specifically for user experience is a testament to the design philosophy behind the product. AirportLabs treats design as part of how operational software is built rather than a finish applied to it, and this recognition says that approach reads clearly well beyond aviation. This is the second recognition Allegra RMS has received this year, reinforcing both the product's market position and the value it delivers to the airports running it.

Allegra RMS is the decision layer for airport resources. Stands, gates, baggage belts, check-in counters, allocated by AI against a single live data layer and each airport's own business rules, and re-optimised continuously as the day moves rather than fixed once and patched by hand.

It works by breaking the silos. Allegra RMS draws schedules, movements, resource status and demand forecasts from the systems already in place and resolves them into one source of operational data, so resources that were planned in separate tools by separate teams are now planned together, on the same data, under the same rules. A change to a stand is understood by check-in. A delay is understood by the belts. On top of that data layer, demand analysis compares scheduled against predicted flights before a peak arrives, scenario planning tests a day against capacity before it runs, and utilisation is reported in real time, so optimisation is measured rather than assumed.

And the intelligence stays accountable. The system proposes; the operator decides. Every allocation is visible, traceable and open to manual intervention, which is the part that earned the design recognition in the first place.

_“Airport operations software is rarely judged on how it feels to use, and that is exactly what we set out to change with Allegra RMS,” said Ligiu Uiorean, Director of AirportLabs. “Being honoured for user experience, by this company, tells us that the design thinking behind the product carries well beyond our own industry. It is a recognition the whole team has earned.”_

Allegra RMS is live at Chicago O'Hare, one of the most complex airport operations in the world, and at more than 20 airports worldwide.

For more information about Allegra RMS, visit our product page.

About AirportLabs

A global leader in aviation technology, AirportLabs delivers integrated, cloud-native tools that make airport operations simple. With over a decade of proven results and deployments at 100+ airports, including some of the world's busiest international hubs, AirportLabs helps operational teams work as one, with shared, real-time insight. By connecting critical systems and simplifying complex data instead of adding complexity, AirportLabs enables airports, airlines, and ground handlers to increase efficiency, strengthen resilience, and deliver a smoother passenger experience.

About Fast Company

Fast Company is a business media brand covering technology, leadership, design and the businesses shaping the future. Its Innovation by Design Awards recognise design work across a wide range of disciplines, from consumer products and digital experiences to transportation, workplace, and social good. Entries are assessed by a jury of designers, executives and Fast Company editors, with this year’s honorees being published in September 2026.