Connecting terminal and airside operations to enhance true collaborative decision making
Martin Bowman, Transport Sector Director for Amor Group, a specialist provider of Airport Operational Systems, discusses the rationale behind Amor’s bid to take CDM concepts firmly in to the heart of the terminal operation, putting passengers at the centre of all airport processes.
With passenger numbers forecast to grow in excess of 5% in each of the next 3 years according to ACI data, global passenger numbers are set to pass 3.5bn. This load volume will put increasing pressure on capacity and resource constrained airports, in addition to all key stakeholder organisations such as airlines, ANSPs, immigration, security providers, ground handling and retailers.
Despite this forecast of continued growth, airport operators are under increasing pressure to drive greater value from existing assets.
This can only be achieved by focusing on improving the passenger experience via a combination of increased operational efficiency and enhanced strategic planning and capacity management – both within terminal and airside operations.
Why Create the Real Time Airport?
In the dynamic airport environment, even the most robust plans can be discarded in light of adverse events. Something as small as an air bridge breaking or the onset of winter conditions can have varying impacts on an airport’s operational performance. Couple this with the need to optimise limited capacity and the requirement for enhanced real time tactical decision making becomes critical to success.
The world’s best and most efficient airports are now adopting a true collaborative decision making model to drive a proactive operational management culture that delivers an excellent passenger experience and enhanced value to all airport stakeholders.
By embracing what Amor calls the Real Time Airport, airports can establish and monitor airport-wide service levels to drive an increase in performance across the operation. Both airside and within the terminal, the multi-stakeholder environment relies on the facilitation of effective and consistent data sharing.
The European CDM and FAA’s NextGen initiatives go some way to addressing this problem, although retaining a primary focus on airside operations. Airport operators should be taking a proactive approach that transcends airside and terminal operations to ensure critical passenger processes and related data are the central focus for collaborative decision making and measurement.
In an ideal situation, passenger processing and progression through terminal processes should continue to run efficiently and effectively regardless of peak demand. Likewise, aircraft should not be forced in to holding patterns and extensive taxiing due to poor stand and takeoff allocations.
This ideal can only be achieved if an airport has an accurate measurement of passenger and aircraft movements at all stages of their journey. Key pinch points across the terminal can only be eliminated as a result of proper planning and effective operation, particularly at peak times. This can often have an adverse effect on the remainder of the key passenger facilitation and aircraft pushback process, impacting on the efficiency of the entire airport operation.
Achieving the Real Time Airport
Effective passenger processing, terminal and airside management can only be implemented if stakeholders have access to in-depth operational data that can help shape strategic operational and tactical planning.
As is demonstrated in many process-based industries, the role of technology is critical to this efficiency realisation. Passenger facilitation requires progress through multiple processes including check-in, security and transfer compounds. These pinch points are inherently linked, compounding any queuing issues throughout each aspect of the journey.
In order to fully realise the potential operational efficiency improvements, airports must consider a passenger measurement ecosystem based on the unique dynamics between terminal and airside operations, whilst not losing sight of their specific passenger profile. As no single technology solution exists that can satisfy the requirements of all airports, it is essential that all stakeholders embrace a holistic view of service measurement.
A range of passenger-centric technology solutions exist that can add immediate value to airport operations. These include Bluetooth mobile device tracking, video analytics, thermal imaging and infra-red beam break devices. When combined with existing systems such as AODB, ANPR, car park management, AMDs, boarding gates, baggage and building management these devices can provide enhanced service delivery data to multiple stakeholders.
By adopting a specifically assembled technology ecosystem to measure the critical passenger processes, airports and the relevant stakeholder organisations can utilise the resultant data to deliver both short and long-term service improvements as a key component of ongoing operational effectiveness.
Experience dictates that only with a comprehensive process of measurement, management and ongoing review an airport can truly consider themselves to be delivering the Real Time Airport.
For more information on the Real Time Airport, head over to Slideshare to read the slides delivered at the recent ACI Airport Exchange by Martin and Mazhar Butt, Head of Service Delivery at Dubai Airports, on the world’s largest service delivery measurement project currently being delivered by Amor.