Airport floors are getting a lot more help these days, and it’s coming from machines. Flagship Aviation Services and SoftBank Robotics America announced that they’ve significantly expanded their autonomous floor care partnership, growing from 100 robots across 15 U.S. airports in 2024 to more than 200 robots operating in 25 locations today.
The partnership, launched in 2024, started as a way for Flagship to test whether autonomous cleaning technology could hold up in one of the toughest environments for janitorial work: airports, with their nonstop foot traffic, tight cleaning windows, and sprawling terminals. Two years later, the numbers tell the story of a program that scaled fast.
The fleet has now logged more than 100,000 operating hours and cleaned nearly 500 million square feet of airport floor space, up from roughly 35 million square feet and 10,000 hours when the partnership began. On an average day, the robots now cover close to one million square feet, roughly doubling the daily output of just two years ago. To put that growth in perspective, the total distance the robots have traveled is roughly equivalent to circling the globe four times, according to Flagship.
Why Airports Are Turning to Automation
Airports present a uniquely demanding cleaning environment: high passenger volumes, limited overnight windows, and floor plans that stretch across concourses, gates, and baggage areas. Flagship’s robotic fleet, drawn from SoftBank Robotics America’s full product line, handles sweeping, scrubbing, mopping, and vacuuming across hard floors and carpets, and can run around the clock, working safely alongside travelers even during peak periods.
That around-the-clock capability is central to the business case. By offloading routine floor care to machines, Flagship’s human cleaning staff can concentrate on the tasks robots can’t do: restrooms, gates, and other spaces that call for hands-on judgment and care. Todd Jacobs, Flagship’s Chief Operating Officer, framed the technology as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, the company’s workforce, emphasizing that people remain central to the service Flagship delivers.
Jeff Williams, Flagship’s Director of Automation and Technology, has led the rollout and pointed to a roughly ninefold increase in fleet operating hours as evidence of how much productivity the program has unlocked. Williams has also driven the addition of newer robot models, including Omnie and the next-generation V40, to the portfolio, with further technology evaluations planned.
Industry Recognition Follows
The cleanliness push appears to be paying off in customer satisfaction rankings. In J.D. Power’s 2025 North America Airport Satisfaction Study, 16 Flagship-supported airports were recognized across the mega, large, and medium airport categories, with eight ranking in the top five of their categories. Seven Flagship-supported airports also made the Top 100 Airports in the World list in the 2026 Skytrax World Airport Awards, and five North American airports were honored in the Airports Council International’s ASQ Customer Experience Awards. Tampa International Airport was separately named “Spotless Space of the Year” at an ISSA industry event.
Flagship isn’t stopping at floor care. Jacobs said the company is exploring additional autonomous applications, including smart restrooms and facility security systems, as it looks for more ways to pair automation with its customer-service culture. For an industry where cleanliness has become a measurable driver of passenger satisfaction scores, the robots’ visible presence in terminals is itself part of the message: a daily signal, as Williams put it, that the airport is committed to high standards of care.
