Airport World, Issue 5, 2013

AIRPORT WORLD OCTOBER-NOVEMBER FEBRUARY-JANUARY 2011 2013

In the spotlight: Information Technology Airports: Dubai, Las Vegas, Burgas & Varna Interviewed: The FAA’s Michael Huerta Plus: Security, retail & airfield safety

THE MAGAZINE OF THE AIRPORTS COUNCIL INTERNATIONAL

IT: The journey has just begun October–November 2013 Volume 18 Issue 5 www.aci.aero

Take your piece of Vienna’s cake: Millions of Hungarian, Czech, Slovak and Austrian passengers.

Treat your airline with a luscious speciality, available only in Vienna: Thanks to our location in the heart of Europe we are the home airport for millions in 4 countries. For more details scan the QR code or visit www.viennaairport.com/cake

OPINION ;OL THNHaPUL VM [OL (PYWVY[Z *V\UJPS 0U[LYUH[PVUHS

Airport World Editor Joe Bates +44 (0) 20 8831 7507 joe@airport-world.com Deputy Editor Caroline Cook +44 (0) 20 8831 7560 caroline@airport-world.com Design, Layout & Production Andrew Montgomery +44 (0) 20 8831 7564 andy@airport-world.com Mark Draper +44 (0) 20 8831 7504 mark@airport-world.com Erica Cooper erica@aviationmedia.aero Website Design & Production José Cuenca +44 (0) 20 8831 7517 jose@aviationmedia.aero Sales Director Jonathan Lee +44 (0) 20 8831 7563 jonathan@airport-world.com Advertising Manager Kalpesh Vadher +44 (0) 20 8831 7510 kalpesh@airport-world.com Andrew Hazell +44 (0) 20 8831 7518 andrewh@airport-world.com Subscriptions Lauren Murtagh +44 (0) 20 8831 7512 subscriptions@airport-world.com

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Digital age Editor, Joe Bates, contemplates all things information technology, including the launch of a new ‘responsive’ Airport World website and app.

H

ow did we get to October so quickly?

It seems like only yesterday I was planning our first issue of the year and now, I’m increasingly being asked for my editorial plan for 2014!

There will be plenty to look forward to in 2014, I can assure you, but we’re not there quite yet as there are still three major ACI events and inter airport Europe to go before year-end and, of course, this Information Technology (IT) themed October/November issue to read at your leisure.

When it comes to IT, it is almost impossible to overstate the impact that advancements in technology have had on all our lives over the past 30 years.

Who could have guessed in 1983, for example, that three decades later 75% of the world’s population would have [access to] a mobile phone (according to The World Bank), and little thing called the Internet would transform the way we live and do business.

Ever wondered why all those telephone kiosks in airport terminals have vanished?

No, well that’s exactly my point, as in this era of the ‘connected traveller’, nobody uses them anymore, as we all have our own mobile phones and often several other communication devices with us.

And as you can read in this issue, there is so much more to come in terms of aviation and the airport environment.

We discover more about the benefits of collaborative decision-making (CDM); mobile advertising; near field communication; and how IT can be used to excite the customer and boost retail revenues.

And to those airports out there that only update their websites once or twice a year, take a look at the feature on page 44 and see what some of the experts think about that!

We also have some IT news of our own, as we shall shortly launch a ‘responsive’ website for better viewing on smartphones and tablets, and by year-end, we’ll unveil the first ever Airport World app, which we hope will make it easier and more convenient for you to read your favourite aviation magazine – whether sitting in the garden at home having a coffee, waiting for a flight at the airport, or climbing Kilimanjaro!

So, if you are reading this online in November/December and finding it quick and easy to view the IT articles and other main features in this issue, please let us know.

The issue also contains airport profile features on Dubai World Central, Las Vegas–McCarran and Bulgaria’s Black Sea gateways, while our regular Airport Exchange column features Warsaw Chopin.

Finally, we learn more about Frankfurt Airport’s customer service programme; launching retail operations in emerging countries; perimeter security; and health and wellbeing.

It seems crazy now, but looking back to my teenage years in the late 1970s/early 80s, I can clearly remember being almost spellbound by the first TV remote controls, being dumbstruck by the invention of the digital watch and laughing out loud when someone suggested that we’d all have our own personal computers in the new millennium.

What’s that expression again? Time flies AW when you’re having fun!

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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CONTENTS

AIRPORT WORLD OCTOBER-NOVEMBER FEBRUARY-JANUARY 2011 2013

In the spotlight: Information Technology Airports: Dubai, Las Vegas, Burgas & Varna Interviewed: The FAA’s Michael Huerta Plus: Security, retail & airfield safety

THE MAGAZINE OF THE AIRPORTS COUNCIL INTERNATIONAL

IT: The journey has just begun October–November 2013 Volume 18 Issue 5 www.aci.aero

Issue 5 Volume 18

In this issue 3 Opinion 10 News 12 ACI News 15 View from the top 16 The Dubai phenomenon Dubai Airports CEO, Paul Griffiths, talks to Sarah McCay about his plans for Dubai World Central–Al Maktoum International Airport ahead of the launch of passenger flights this October.

20 Bigger and brighter Caroline Cook finds out how Fraport’s Bulgarian venture is boosting the performance of its Black Sea airports.

22 Headline act What has new aviation director, Rosemary Vassiliadis, got in store for Las Vegas–McCarran?

Alex Hannaford reports.

27 Future thinking Assistant director for facilitation & IT, Arturo Garcia-Alonso, contemplates the importance of IT and the launch of ACI’s Airport IT Security Programme.

28 Enabling growth Technology will be the key driver for the ‘airports of the future’, writes ARINC Asia-Pacific’s senior director for aviation and ground, systems solutions, Jeff Amiri.

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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CONTENTS

Director General Angela Gittens Chair Yiannis Paraschis (Athens, Greece) Vice Chair Fredrick J Piccolo (Sarasota, USA) Immediate Past Chair Max Moore-Wilton (Sydney, Australia) Treasurer Louis E Miller (Atlanta, USA) ACI WORLD GOVERNING BOARD DIRECTORS Africa (3) Dalil Guendouz (Casablanca, Morocco) Pascal Komla (Lomé, Togo) Robinson Misitala (Livingstone, Zambia) Asia-Pacific (8) Tan Sri Bashir Ahmad (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) VP Agrawal (Delhi, India) Ghanem Al-Hajri (Sharjah, UAE) Dennis Chant (Gold Coast, Australia) Zhiyi Dong (Beijing, China) Seow Hiang Lee (Singapore) Kerrie Mather (Sydney, Australia) Kosaburo Morinaka (Tokyo, Japan) Europe (7) Declan Collier (Dublin, Ireland) Michael Kerkloh (Munich, Germany) Yiannis Paraschis (Athens, Greece) Tonci Peovic (Zagreb, Croatia) Ad Rutten (Amsterdam, Holland) Stefan Schulte (Frankfurt, Germany) José-Manuel Vargas (Madrid, Spain) Latin America & Caribbean (3) Philippe Baril (Quito, Ecuador) Fernando Bosque (Guadalajara, Mexico) Héctor Navarrete Muñoz (Merida, Mexico) North America (7) Thella Bowens (San Diego, USA) David Edwards (Greenville, USA) Frank Miller (San Antonio, USA) Reg K Milley (Edmonton, Canada) Fredrick J Piccolo (Sarasota, USA) Mark Reis (Seattle, USA) Maureen Riley (Salt Lake City, USA) Regional Advisers to the World Governing Board (7) Larry Cox (Memphis, USA) Stephen Gichuki (Nairobi, Kenya) Seow Hiang Lee (Singapore) Bongani Maseko (Johannesburg, South Africa) Barry Rempel (Winnipeg, Canada) Earl Richards (Jamaica) Miguel Southwell (Atlanta, USA) Observer World Business Partner Board Chairperson Randy Pope (Burns & McDonnell)

30 Going mobile Ever-inventive brands are using smartphones to connect with passengers at airports and on almost every stage of their journey, writes Jeremy Corfield.

32 Power to the people Alaistair Deacon discusses the importance of enhancing the passenger experience through collaborative decision making.

36 Change for good Eric Miart provides a progress report on Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) and discusses the reasons for its comparatively slow uptake outside of Europe.

38 Bank on data Better analysis of sales data can help airports boost retail revenues and customer satisfaction levels, writes John de Giorgio.

42 Fast times Does near field communication (NFC) hold the key to faster passenger processing and delivering the dream of seamless travel? Renaud Irminger shares his insights.

44 Web wonders Barry Mansfield reports on the latest in airport web design. How can sites be improved to boost customer communication, the airport experience and operator revenues?

48 Thinking outside the box Adopting a multi-channel approach to retailing will help concessionaires maximise sales revenues in the years ahead, write Andy Morrey and Sophie Albizua.

50 Airport Marketing Exchange In the first of a regular series of exchanges, David McMullen catches up with Przemysław Przybylski of Warsaw Chopin Airport (WAW) to exchange ideas and explain why maximising the social media potential of your airport begins with having a clear plan.

52 One vision Airport World rounds-up the latest airfield safety news from across the globe.

Correct as of Septemer 20, 2013

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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RUNNING HEAD CONTENTS

56 Don’t worry, be happy!

Stuart Bowden discovers more about Frankfurt Airport’s innovative ‘Great to Have You Here’ customer service programme.

58 Lands of opportunity Duty free expert Paul Topping provides some insight into the challenges and opportunities of launching retail operations in emerging markets.

62 Rest assured From enchanted gardens to yoga rooms and health stations, Sarah McCay takes a look at the latest health and wellbeing initiatives being introduced at airports around the world.

Airport World online Visit our website at www.airport-world.com for daily news, views and developments from airports, ACI World Business Partners and industry suppliers across the globe.

Want even more?

Sign up online to receive our bi-weekly newsletter, which will bring the latest articles, videos and news to your inbox.

64 First line of defence John Romanowich discusses best practices for airport perimeter security.

66 Relief effort Dr Teo Babun and James Smith provide a special report on the success of an initiative designed to make airports in the Latin America & Caribbean region more resilient to extreme weather and natural disasters.

69 Project watch Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

71 ACI’s World Business Partners Airport World on Facebook Airport World is now on Facebook.

Find us at www.facebook.com/airportworld for the latest industry postings.

74 Environment news 76 The last word FAA Administrator, Michael Huerta, talks to Joe Bates about leadership, budgets, safety and the development of the US airport system.

78 ACI traffic trends

Airport World on Twitter Airport World is now tweeting.

You can follow us @airportworldmag for the latest industry updates.

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AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

NEWS

Mayor scraps Midway privatisation

For the second time in five years the planned privatisation of Chicago Midway has collapsed at the eleventh hour – this time due to one of the two remaining bidders dropping out of the race for a 40-year lease to operate the gateway.

Chicago Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, pulled the plug on any potential deal on September 5 after the Industry Funds Management/Manchester Airport Group consortium dropped out of the bidding, citing valuation issues for the decision.

Their decision left only the Macquarie Group/Ferrovial consortium as the sole remaining bidder.

“The mayor has decided not to move forward with the Midway leasing agreement,” said the mayor’s spokeswoman, Sarah Hamilton.

“We set a high bar that required a new level of taxpayer protection. The companies did not meet that bar and could not make an offer that would meet what taxpayers deserve.”

A previous attempt to lease it to privatise Midway fizzled out in 2009 after winning bidder MIDCo – comprising Citi Infrastructure Fund, Vancouver Airport Services (YVRAS) and John Hancock Life Insurance Company – failed to secure the financing for the proposed $2.52 billion, 99-year deal.

Out of this world

Houston Airport System (HAS) has unveiled its vision for the future for Ellington Airport (EFD) by releasing conceptual renderings of a possible Spaceport.

The designs capture various elements of the project, including a terminal, an aviation museum and the accompanying industries that are expected to arrive, should Houston become the United States’ ninth licensed Spaceport.

Houston Mayor, Annise Parker, stated: “We believe a licensed Spaceport in Houston would not only serve as an economic generator for the city but would also enhance Houston’s well-deserved reputation as a leader and key player in the aerospace industry.”

If the licensing is secured, HAS would proceed in establishing the infrastructure required to accommodate enterprises such as space vehicle assembly, launching of micro-satellites, astronaut training, zero gravity experimentation and space tourism.

Aviation director, Mario Diaz, commented: “This is not a conversation based on science fiction or futuristic projections. This is a conversation about how Houston can access and enhance an industry that is already well-established and growing exponentially.”

Trillion-dollar industry

The Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) has released a report showing that aviation supports 26.8 million jobs and $1.1 trillion in GDP across the 21 economies in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) region.

According to its Aviation: Benefits Beyond Borders APEC report, there are 857 commercial airports in the region’s air transport system.

Paul Steele, ATAG’s executive director, commented: “The breadth and importance of air transport to economies in APEC is impressive. The fact that, ranked by GDP, the region’s air transport industry would be the fifth largest APEC economy shows how large the industry is.”

The report estimates that by 2030, air transport will support up to 45 million jobs and $3.2 trillion in GDP. However, it cautions that if growth were just one per cent lower each year, up to eight million of those jobs would remain uncreated.

Steele continued: “Aviation is a great facilitator and catalyst for economic growth, but it needs to be growth in a sustainable and systematic way. We must ensure that the industry and governments work together to build the needed infrastructure to facilitate this growth. But any new infrastructure must fit in to a broader strategic plan.”

News in brief Somaliland, a self-declared republic in east Africa, has completed a renovation of the runway at Egal International Airport, which serves its ‘capital’ Hargeisa. The gateway now boasts a revamped 2.4km runway and expanded terminals.

Cintas Corporation has named Tampa International Airport as a finalist in its 12th annual ‘America’s Best Restroom’ contest. Its toilets were renovated earlier this year as part of the airport’s $30 million Main Terminal Modernization project. Designed to provide a “bright, clean atmosphere with a fresh, Florida feel”, each restroom has a wall-

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sized image of flowers, birds, fish and other native Florida wildlife. The airport quips: “Our facilities are specially designed for folks who have to go when they are on the go.”

opened Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport.

The gateway will be equipped to handle 5mppa when its second phase expansion programme is complete in 2016.

Warsaw Chopin Airport’s new airport hotel has opened for business. Located 800 metres from the gateway, the three-star Hampton by Hilton Warsaw Airport Hotel boasts 116 rooms and onsite parking for 100 vehicles.

The rededication ribbon-cutting ceremony for the historic airport terminal building at the New Orleans Lakefront Airport took place on September 28. Devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, this original structure of classic Art Deco design, completed in 1933, was one of the first of its kind to operate in the United States.

Dufry has signed a master concessionaire agreement to operate duty free shops at Sri Lanka’s newly

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

NEWS

Jewel in the crown

Changi Airport aims to woo tourists and transit passengers with Project Jewel, a multi-purpose building featuring a garden and giant waterfall.

Under plans from a group of designers, led by the architect Moshe Safdie, known for Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands resort, Project Jewel will occupy an area of 30,500sqm by Terminal 1.

The design includes check-in counters, a lush garden and a waterfall descending from the glass and steel structure’s roof.

Changi Airport Group (CAG) is working on the concept with CapitaMalls Asia, one of Asia’s largest listed shopping centre developers.

In combination with work on Terminal 4, due to complete by 2017, it will raise Changi’s handling capacity up to 85 million passengers a year, claims CAG. Lee Seow Hiang, CAG’s CEO, enthuses: “With Project Jewel, we are pleased to be developing an exciting product that will swing travellers to choose Changi Airport, and Singapore.”

Expected to be ready by 2018 and linked by walkways to the terminals, Project Jewel will be built on the site of a open air car park next to Terminal 1.

Goodwill hunting

Making an impression

Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam International Airport (MRU) in Mauritius has inaugurated a new $305 million terminal, raising its capacity to 4.5mppa.

The 56,900sqm terminal is the largest piece of infrastructure ever built in Mauritius, according to Aéroports de Paris Management (ADPM), the subsidiary of ADP, which oversaw the project.

Constructed with 140,000 tonnes of steel, the terminal is intended to give an impression of lightness through a roof modelled on the ravenala palm, a tree found across Mauritius.

ADPM CEO, Jacques Follain, says: “The terminal doubles the airport’s capacity and will play a crucial role in the economic development of Mauritius.”

The Allegheny County Airport Authority has announced a pilot programme for archery-only hunting in designated zones on Pittsburgh International property.

Roughly 2,362 acres of land, separated from the airport by a fence line and interstate highway, will be made available for authorised hunters.

Hunters will be cited for trespass if they are found to be hunting outside the designated zones on the airport property.

Limited to the autumn archery deer hunting season – which also overlaps with the turkey season – the programme aims to benefit the community, manage wildlife near the airport and reduce motor vehicle accidents on the interstate.

Pennsylvania state Rep, Mark Mustio, enthuses: “This is a good example of government at several levels listening to the concerns of the residents and addressing those concerns.”

Surplus sale

Denver International Airport (DIA), Colorado, has raised $155,200 after selling 17 pieces of airport maintenance and operations equipment.

Several Colorado public use airports purchased equipment ranging from dump trucks to snow ploughs at reduced prices at the sale this summer.

The DIA Surplus Equipment Program has helped more than 20 Colorado airports purchase over 80 pieces of airport-related heavy equipment since 2005.

Michael Huemann, manager of Leadville-Lake County Airport – which bought a sweeper/scrubber, a generator and a 10ft dump truck with snow plough – commented: “The equipment we have purchased has saved the county thousands of dollars and has increased the amount of time our runway is open during the snowy winter months.”

For daily news updates, visit www.airport-world.com Malcolm Johns will replace Jim Boult as Christchurch International Airport’s CEO at the beginning of 2014. Johns is an experienced businessman and currently the chief executive of passenger transport network, InterCity Group. He is also deputy chair of Tourism New Zealand.

Manas Airport in Bishkek has opened an immigration facility for economic migrants this month as Kyrgyzstan’s airport operator chases ambitious growth targets. Kyrgyzstan is aiming to develop its air capacity under a National Development Strategy for 2013-17.

Dublin Airport has passed a major milestone in its online communications by topping 40,000 followers on Twitter. In a recent survey of 613 airports on Twitter, Dublin Airport was ranked behind only Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester Airport, Simon Bolivar Airport in Venezuela and London City Airport.

Hamburg Airport now hosts Germany’s only Victoria’s Secret outlet. The store is focused on skin and body care products and travel accessories such as handbags, passport wallets, scarves and sunglasses.

Kim Aguirre is the new director of aviation at Mineta San José International Airport. Assistant director of aviation since 2008 and the gateway’s CCO since 2011, she takes over from Bill Sherry who is retiring after eight years.

Dr Stefan Schulte’s term as CEO of Fraport, due to end in August next year, has been extended until August 2019. Schulte, who has led the German airport operator since September 2009, has been given an early renewal on his contract to ensure continuity, according to Karlheinz Weimar, chairman of the supervisory board.

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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ACI WORLD NEWS

ACI World director general, Angela Gittens, at the launch of the APEX in Safety programme in Calgary.

World in motion

Christopher Miles, assistant director, APEX in Safety, provides an update on ACI’s global safety programme.

T

he Airport Excellence (APEX) in Safety Programme was developed by ACI in response to the aviation and stakeholder communities’ call-to-action to improve aviation safety worldwide.

It helps airports identify and mitigate aviation safety vulnerabilities through peer review missions, education, mentoring and best practice guidance to enhance the safety of aviation operations at aerodromes.

APEX, by its very nature of collaborative interaction between airport peers, promotes frank and open discussion on challenges faced by local operators, and helps to identify relevant solutions implemented by Safety Partners within their operations abroad.

The Programme complements the ICAO Global Aviation Safety Plan and other industry initiatives to ensure a holistic and coordinated approach that optimises outcomes for the benefit of all.

Airport Safety Partners are at the very heart of ACI’s APEX in Safety Programme. They subscribe to the philosophy of ‘no airport left behind’ and are leaders in the promotion of safety across geographical boundaries.

What are the benefits for safety partners?

• Staff development: Unique opportunities to recognise high performing staff and provide them with a learning environment that promotes knowledge transfer and knowledge acquisition.

• Route partnership: Ensuring that best practices are integral to the start and end of a journey.

• Host Airport mentoring: Safety Partners often form bonds with host airports that extend beyond the APEX review to include reciprocal visits and partnerships.

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AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

If the programme is to continue growing and responding to industry needs, APEX must increase the number of Safety Partners in all world regions.

In fact, the last few months have proven to be very positive with 18 airport operators signing up, or formally committing, to the APEX in Safety Programme.

Especially encouraging is the response from the ACI North America (ACI-NA) region, which accounts for 50% of new growth. In addition to this tremendous and positive response from ACI-NA, we will continue reaching out to the global community of airports to enable this momentum to continue in the coming months and years.

What do you have to do to become a Safety Partner?

Becoming a Safety Partner is easy and the commitment brings many rewards. Safety Partners are simply requested to provide an airport safety professional to take part in two APEX Safety Reviews (each typically lasting one week), on mutually agreeable dates, in a two-year period.

No costs are associated with serving as a Safety Partner, as the Host Airport assumes both the travel and living expenses.

In return, Safety Partner professionals benefit from unique professional development and networking opportunities and the status of the Safety Partner airport is further elevated by virtue of its leadership in the area of safety best practices.

Become an APEX in Safety Partner today Visit the website and sign up at www.aci.aero/apex

ACI WORLD NEWS

ACI events

2014

2014

2013

2013

2014

March 12-14

April 29-30

November 2-5

October 19-23

May 26-28

ACI Airport Economics & Finance Conference & Exhibition London, UK

ATAG Aviation & Environment Summit Geneva, Switzerland

ACI Latin America & Caribbean Regional Conference & Exhibition Montevideo, Uruguay

ACI Africa Regional Conference & Exhibition Lomé, Togo

ACI World Annual General Assembly ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Conference Seoul, South Korea

ACI offices ACI World Angela Gittens, Director General PO Box 302 800 Rue du Square Victoria Montréal, Quebec H4Z 1G8 Canada Tel : +1 514 373 1200 Fax : +1 514 373 1201 aci@aci.aero www.aci.aero

ACI Fund for Developing Nations’ Airports Angela Gittens, Managing Director c/o Geneva, Switzerland Tel: + 1 514 373 1200 Fax: +1 514 373 1201 acifund@aci.aero ACI Asia-Pacific Patti Chau, Regional Director Hong Kong SAR, China Tel: +852 2180 9449 Fax: +852 2180 9462 info@aci-asiapac.aero www.aci-asiapac.aero

ACI Africa Ali Tounsi, Regional Secretary Casablanca, Morocco Tel: +212 619 775 101 atounsi@aci-africa.aero www.aci-africa.aero ACI Europe Olivier Jankovec, Director General Brussels, Belgium Tel: +32 (2) 552 0978 Fax: +32 (2) 502 5637 danielle.michel@aci-europe.org www.aci-europe.org

ACI Latin America & Caribbean Javier Martinez Botacio, Director General Quito, Ecuador Tel: +593 2294 4900 Fax: +593 2294 4974 jmartinez@aci-lac.aero www.aci-lac.aero ACI North America Deborah McElroy, Interim President Washington DC, USA Tel: +1 202 293 8500 Fax: +1 202 331 1362 postmaster@aci-na.org www.aci-na.org

ACI represents 573 members operating 1,751 airports in 174 countries and territories, which in 2012 handled 5.7 billion passengers, 92.5 million tonnes of cargo and 79 million aircraft movements. ACI is the international association of the world’s airports. It is a non-profit organisation, the prime purpose of which is to advance the interests of airports and promote professional excellence in airport management and operations.

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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View from the top

ACI VIEWPOINT

Director general, Angela Gittens, reflects on the success of ACI’s Airport Service Quality (ASQ) programme and why increasing customer satisfaction at your airport is good for business.

O

ver the last twenty years, we have witnessed the transformation of the airport industry as structural and ownership changes have brought new stakeholders and business models into the industry.

Competition between airports has reached new heights and the flying public is demanding a higher level and greater variety of services.

Regulators, too, are paying closer attention to the quality of service delivered at airports. Indeed, regulators worldwide are increasingly requiring airports (either run by the public sector, under concession contracts or fully privatised) to benchmark the quality of the services provided against other international airports.

In light of the above, ACI developed and launched the Airport Service Quality (ASQ) initiative in 2006 to help airports improve the quality of their services to the travelling public. Since then, the ASQ survey has become the airport industry’s standard for measuring customer satisfaction with 281 participating airports from around the world, including more than 75% of the world’s 100 top airports.

The ASQ initiative comprises four core programmes that provide key customer survey and management information: ASQ Survey, ASQ Performance, ASQ Assured and ASQ Retail.

It shows airports how to get maximum return from their investment in service delivery. It also allows airports to create performance guidelines and set up incentive programmes, with the goal of maximising passenger satisfaction and spend.

The ASQ Survey is the flagship programme which consists of a customer satisfaction survey measuring passenger perception of the quality of services provided by an airport, and provides insight into the average passenger’s “on the day” experience.

The programme allows participating airports to benchmark their results with other airports in their selected panel, as well as with airports in their size category, region and globally.

The ASQ Survey uses the same questionnaire, methodology and sample plan principles at all participant airports, which ensures comparable results.

While each participating airport receives the data from all other participating airports (allowing it to identify best practice and to measure its own performance precisely), all participants are contractually bound to preserve the confidentiality of the data and results.

The survey fieldwork is administered by the participating airport and the completed survey forms are centrally processed.

The ASQ survey is based on a self-completion standard questionnaire, which is distributed to passengers in waiting areas at departure gates of pre-selected flights, according to the sample plan defined for each participant airport.

The questionnaire – translated into 35 languages with additional languages translated if needed – is designed for airports of all sizes through three different versions of the ASQ Survey, namely: ASQ Main, ASQ Regional and ASQ Unique.

The Main programme runs for a full calendar year, with surveys undertaken in each of the four quarters of the year.

The Regional programme is specifically designed for airports with fewer than two million passengers with two survey periods: summer and winter. Lastly, the ASQ Unique Survey represents a single study in a particular period of time, using the same ASQ standard questionnaire.

This version is especially designed for airports that want to take a snapshot of their performance possibly with a view to participating in ASQ Main or ASQ Regional.

ASQ Survey covers 34 key service areas and includes eight major categories such as access, check-in, security, airport facilities, food and beverage providers, and more. All participating airports use the same survey questions, which creates an industry standard set of responses. All participating airports see the ASQ survey results for all other participating airports.

Airports have found that high customer satisfaction is good business. The information ASQ provides allows airports to optimise investments and initiatives; monitor performance of suppliers; share best practice with other airports; assess the performance of management; and market their airport more successfully.

If you want to find out more about ASQ, visit ACI’s website at www.aci.aero/Airport-Service-Quality or contact Rafael Echevarne, director of economics and programme development, at rechavarne@aci.aero AW

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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AIRPORT REPORT: DUBAI

The Dubai phenomenon Dubai Airports CEO, Paul Griffiths, talks to Sarah McCay about his plans for Dubai World Central–Al Maktoum International Airport ahead of the launch of passenger flights this October.

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AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

AIRPORT REPORT: DUBAI

I

f any place on earth has the X-factor, surely it is Dubai, which has grown from a small trading post in the Gulf to one of the world’s most successful aviation hubs in less than 30 years.

For years, Dubai has arguably led the way for aviation growth in the Middle East, and with Dubai World Central–Al Maktoum International Airport (DWC) set to open to passenger flights in October, its phenomenal growth over the last decade shows no sign of slowing down.

Dubai International Airport (DXB) has seen record growth in passenger and cargo figures year-on-year.

Indeed, passenger traffic hit 32.6 million in the first half of 2013, making it the busiest six months in the airport’s history, and air cargo volumes rose 10.2% to 1,196,894 tonnes during the same period.

As a result, plans are afoot to increase DXB’s capacity to 90 million passengers per annum by 2018.

For any other destination, this would seem like a phenomenal feat, but not for Dubai. The city that has risen from the desert to become a tourism and business metropolis in a matter of decades is about to open a second international airport for passenger traffic.

An even bigger international airport, tipped to handle more than 160 million passengers and 12 million tonnes of cargo annually once fully operational, Dubai World Central will commence passenger flights in October, when it begins its quest to become the busiest airport in the world.

A fresh approach According to Paul Griffiths, CEO of operator Dubai Airports, the plan is to completely reinvent the airport experience at DWC. “We want to take a fresh view of the entire airport product,” he enthuses. “Most airports today have built on the legacy processes of the 1940/50s. Our aim is to have an airport like no other that will have a product and customer experience like no other.

“We want to make the passenger journey much shorter. We aim to take the entire process and cut out as many steps as possible. There are automated systems for all the legacy processes, such as check-in, passport checks etc.

“The passenger can check-in from their home or office, ensure their baggage is tagged and ready, have their passport details and profiles checked so their security status is already predetermined, all before leaving for the airport.

“The aim is to converge a lot of the legacy processes and make the whole airport process pretty invisible but no less thorough.”

The majority of DWC’s passenger movements will be transit passengers, and again, the aim is to make transfer times shorter.

“This makes the end to end journey more attractive,” points out Griffiths, who uses Emirates’ Newcastle to Sydney service as a prime example of how Dubai connects the world.

“Before the direct Emirates flight you had to travel to Heathrow and then via Bangkok or Singapore, so two intermediary airports. Now, one airline flies direct, with a short transit in Dubai.

“This is a huge time saving and we hope that will be the case for many more destinations.”

Faster turnarounds Griffiths is also looking at streamlining the airside experience.

“At the moment, the way the airport turnaround is managed is a bit fragmented,” he remarks.

His aim is to have one vehicle to turn an aircraft around in a short time. There will be a complete review of the logistics behind this, but the economics are clear: the shorter time spent on the tarmac the better, both for the airport and for the airline.

Air traffic control capacity is another area Griffiths and his team are looking at in great detail.

“It’s no good having slick operations on the ground if you don’t have it in the air,” he muses. “We are looking at technical enhancements to give us greater reliability in the air traffic control process.”

The United Arab Emirates’ newest gateway, which officially opened to cargo flights in June 2010, boasts a 92 metre high air traffic control tower.

Customer comfort Griffiths is confident that passengers will particularly like what they find post-security, where cinemas, gyms, swimming pools and health and beauty services are all on offer.

“There is an opportunity to take the service beyond duty free and integrate retail, entertainment and food & beverage,” he says.

“You can take everyone as an individual who might want to use their leisure time in a different way. You create more choices but make them cost effective.

“In F&B, we are now working to reflect the international profile of our customers with a load of international brands. When we opened Concourse A [at DXB] in January, we were able to go out to the world with a number of brand names. Our product service has to reflect our global market.”

Target busting Phase 1 of DWC includes a single A380 compatible runway and 64 remote aircraft stands. Once completed, DWC will have up to four passenger terminals and five parallel runways, each 4.5km long.

Initial passenger capacity at Dubai World Central is 5mppa, but with an ambitious target of 160mppa by the mid 2020s.

“Our aim is to build up capacity over time and we are just finding out what the possibilities are to extend [beyond the target of 160mppa],” reveals Griffiths.

Passenger operations at DWC commence on October 27 with two airlines: Saudi Arabia’s nasair and Hungarian low-cost carrier Wizz Air. Nasair plans to operate more than 50 flights a week between Dubai and destinations in Saudi Arabia. The carrier already operates 950 weekly flights to 28 destinations with a fleet of 21 aircraft comprised of Airbus A320s and Embraer E190s.

Wizz Air will provide non-stop services linking DWC to Central and Eastern Europe. It has a fleet of 40 Airbus A320 aircraft operating over 1,500 weekly flights to 93 destinations.

“Wizz Air will serve eastern parts of Europe giving access to the winter sun market for a new category of visitors. It is a short flight down to Dubai, and you are guaranteed excellent weather. There will be some surprises from the network opportunities,” Griffiths promises.

Once the airport has the infrastructure and critical mass, Dubaibased Emirates Airline is tipped to move its hub to DWC. “Emirates is such a size now that we have to get enough capacity to operate a single hub as they are growing and we need a capacity of at least 60-70mppa.

It takes a few years to make an airport of that sort of capacity,” Griffiths points out.

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AIRPORT REPORT: DUBAI

While Emirates may move to DWC in the years to come, Griffiths is not working on creating a carbon copy of DXB, which is located in the old town centre of Garhoud.

“The good thing about DWC is that it is at the opposite end of Dubai from DXB, so airlines can serve a completely new catchment area.

Regional carriers, especially low cost carriers, will see a lot of the benefits, with shorter transfer times to Downtown Dubai and the marina area.”

The airport forms the heart of a greater project also called Dubai World Central, a $32 billion, 140sqkm multi-phase development of six clustered zones that includes the Dubai Logistics City (DLC), Commercial City, Residential City, Aviation City and Golf City.

The development is the region’s first integrated, multi-modal transportation platform connecting air, sea and land.

“Having an international airport on your doorstep is good for business. You’ll get logistics and manufacturing companies starting to see the distribution links,” notes Griffiths. “There are a huge amount of business opportunities.”

Cargo connectivity Located in the vicinity of the Jebel Ali Port and Free Zone, with a bonded road linking the airport with the seaport, DWC makes air-sea connectivity achievable in four hours.

This makes the airport an important cargo hub, not just for the region, but globally too, insists Griffiths.

Phase one offers a cargo terminal building with a capacity of 250,000 tonnes a year. Once completed, the airport will have a capacity for 12 million tonnes a year.

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As previously mentioned, DWC opened to cargo operators in 2010, and already, 34 cargo carriers are using the gateway, with cargo growing by 144% in 2012 to 219,092 tonnes.

Emirates SkyCargo has confirmed that all dedicated freight flights will be operated from its new cargo base at DWC from May 2014.

Two airports, one city With DXB and DWC both falling under the Dubai Airports umbrella, synergies are already forming between the two airports, but can Dubai sustain both?

For Griffiths, who was managing director of London Gatwick before his 2007 move to Dubai, it’s a challenge he’s happy to consider.

“There are great economies of scale: a lot of our new staff will gain experience at the established airport and we will also redeploy some of our experienced staff to DWC,” he says.

DWC will open with just a couple hundred staff. That figure will definitely grow, but by how much is hard to gauge. Staff levels will depend on the success of the automation reengineering, which will cover labour intensive operations such as check-in.

So what will happen to DXB in the long-term, especially when and if Emirates moves its hub to DWC? “We don’t have to make a decision now,” Griffiths explains, adding that the infrastructure at DXB is relatively young.

“Complexity of airspace might be difficult to manage and that is something we will look at, but obviously we can keep both operating for quite some time.”

If both airports do continue to operate, Dubai could be on its way to serving more than 260mppa – making it one of the world’s biggest aviation hubs.

AW

AIRPORT REPORT: BURGAS & VARNA

Bigger and brighter Caroline Cook finds out how Fraport’s Bulgarian venture is boosting the performance of its Black Sea airports.

I

n less than a decade, Fraport Twin Star Airport Management (FTSAM) has transformed two of Bulgaria’s busiest airports, with 2013 marking the operator’s biggest achievements in the country to date.

A joint venture between German airport operator Fraport and 40% partner Bulgarian Aviation Group Airport Services, FTSAM won the 35-year concession agreement for Burgas and Varna airports in 2006, and soon developed the facilities’ master plans – a feat anticipated for several years.

“Fraport started analysing Varna and Burgas ten years ago when the Bulgarian government first started going into concession agreements,” FTSAM’s CEO, Aletta von Massenbach, told Airport World.

Educated as a lawyer with a postgraduate degree in project management, von Massenbach – a 17-year veteran of Fraport – joined FTSAM in October 2012 and is the only female CEO in the Fraport portfolio.

She says: “Bulgaria has huge potential and the Black Sea coast is beautiful. The country has a good economic framework and we found that the airports fit our criteria. With a stable environment and good partners, it made sense.”

The company wasted no time moving forward with its plans and, in addition to updating the existing infrastructure at both airports, began construction on new passenger terminals at Varna and Burgas in December 2011.

Taking up the challenge Designed by Halcrow Group, Pascall+Watson and their Bulgarian partners SavantElbul, the terminals are FTSAM’s first major steps in turning the airports into world-class facilities.

Starting work in December 2011, a consortium formed between TechnoimportExport and IçtaşHoldings built the infrastructure.

Varna Airport’s terminal opened its doors to the travelling public on August 27. At 20,000sqm, it’s three times larger than its predecessor and features upgraded technology to enhance the passenger experience.

“The processes are faster and there is a completely different commercial offer,” says von Massenbach. “One of the best parts of our new systems is that passengers don’t notice them; they just enjoy the good flow through the airport.”

With 25 check-in desks; three boarding card checkpoints; eight security lanes and seven gates, the terminal can cater for 2.3mppa.

The arrivals area – split into Schengen and non-Schengen – has 12 passport control points, in addition to one 90m and two 60m baggage carousels.

The airport’s concessions offering has also increased dramatically; passengers can now enjoy a 770sqm shopping area, run by Nuance BG AD, and a 1,200sqm food and beverage space, including a 554sqm external courtyard.

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Able to handle 3.3mppa, Burgas Airport’s slightly larger facility, due to open around the end of October, has an 800sqm shopping area and 1,220sqm for F&B – again, with a 554sqm courtyard.

It offers 31 check-in desks; three boarding card checkpoints; nine security lanes, and eight gates.

The arrivals area – also split into Schengen/non-Schengen zones – has 12 immigration points; one 90m and three 60m baggage carousels.

In addition to their much larger sizes, both terminals can be easily expanded and offer flexible use for seasonal traffic needs.

“During the winter season, parts of both terminals can be closed to save energy,” states von Massenbach, adding that the airports’ overall energy consumption levels have reduced as a result of sustainable design.

In airport-wide efforts to optimise consumption, FTSAM has also installed intelligent building management systems while various ancillary facilities, such as the heat plants, have been renovated. The company is part of Fraport’s wider environmental management system and is certified by the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme.

While the opening of Burgas’ terminal depends on various governmental and administrative procedures, von Massenbach told Airport World that FTSAM was fully prepared for operations: “Varna acted as a benchmark for Burgas, so it has not been a new project for us. We’re hoping for a smooth process when it opens.”

The two airports are around 120km apart, making the parallel construction projects challenging.

Explaining why Burgas Airport’s terminal will become operational months after its sister facility, von Massenbach notes: “We couldn’t do both openings at the same time with the diligence we wanted. Our aim was to finalise Varna first and then move on to Burgas.”

Despite original plans suggesting the terminals would open concurrently, she insisted: “We don’t view October as a delay to bring the project over the finish line.

“We didn’t want to inaugurate terminals at both of the twin Black Sea airports during the middle of the high season.

Fraport is a cautious company and two terminals opening at the same time was a challenging process.

Image courtesy of Fraport Twin Star Airport Management.

AIRPORT REPORT: BURGAS & VARNA “For example, during the runway reconstruction work last year at VAR, the airport was closed with air traffic diverted to BOJ instead. We can use the airports in tandem.”

Next steps The opening of the new terminals forms part of FTSAM’s partnership with the Bulgarian tourism board to boost visitor numbers to the country.

In recent years, the airports have seen a rise in passengers from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, while traffic from the UK and Germany has remained “strong but stable”.

“We are seeing a tendency in travellers from Scandinavia as well,” adds von Massenbach. “Now, it’s just a case of finding the right marketing strategy to encourage this growth.”

She continues: “In terms of business, we are looking at how we can optimise our commercial revenues and we expect a boost with these inaugurations.”

The company is concentrating on building its commercial revenues for the time being but plans for the coming years are already in place.

Varna and Burgas’ master plans up to 2025 prioritise airside development, explained von Massenbach. “The landside is in shape now at both airports. We’ve already spent €165 million in seven years.

“The runway at Varna was refurbished in 2012 and we now want to work on the apron and taxiways at both airports, starting from 2016.

“We also need to upgrade regular parts of the infrastructure on an ongoing basis, such as the fire rescue facilities,” she says.

For Fraport as a whole, 2013 will also see the opening of St Petersburg’s new terminal. “There is lots happening across the company but we really are very excited about Bulgaria,” concludes von Massenbach.

AW

Nuance heads to Bulgaria Varna Airport (VAR) will deliver 790sqm of shopping under a joint venture between the retailer and Fraport Twin Star Airport Management.

The airport’s brand new terminal is offering extensive retail options through an agreement between the operator and a Nuance offshoot.

Retail at the gateway includes a walk-through duty free store, an arrival store, a gate shop, and speciality stores, says Nuance BG AD, a joint venture between Nuance and Bulgarian Airways Group.

A Temptation store will offer fashion watches and jewellery, while Atelier sells women’s leather accessories, and Sun Catcher features premium eyewear.

Varna’s appeal as a tourist destination draws 1.2 million passengers through the gateway each year.

Cengiz Iman, Nuance GM Turkey and Bulgaria, says travellers will experience “a truly modern environment with an exciting range of local and international products and brands”.

Across the space, passengers can browse across perfumes and cosmetics, liquor, tobacco, confectionery, local food and drink, toys, sunglasses, leather goods and bags, as well as watches and jewellery.

The concessions are expected to deliver €180 million in sales over a five-year term.

AW

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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AIRPORT REPORT: LAS VEGAS

Headline

act

What has new aviation director, Rosemary Vassiliadis, got in store for Las Vegas–McCarran?

Alex Hannaford reports.

I

t may have seemed like an easy step up the ladder from deputy director of aviation to the hot seat, but when you’re responsible for one of the busiest airports in the US, your predecessor was in the role for 16 years, and you’re taking the helm at an airport that has seen massive amounts of construction over the past few years despite a gloomy economy, that step doesn’t look so small any more.

The good news is that having served as Randall Walker’s deputy at the Clark County Department of Aviation since 1997, nobody was better qualified than Rosemary Vassiliadis to take over when he retired in June.

Modest Vassiliadis states that she has “very big shoes to fill” as Walker was a well-known and popular character in Las Vegas who helped make McCarran a “very successful airport”.

Indeed, McCarran handled a healthy 41.7 million passengers (+0.4%) last year – its second successive annual increase, and the highest annual total since 2008 when 44 million travellers used the Nevada gateway.

Its all-time record was set in 2007 by the way when McCarran operated above its then design capacity when 47.7 million passengers squeezed through its facilities.

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Vassiliadis admits that she finds her new role exciting, challenging and daunting. However, one thing she doesn’t have to worry about for a while is new infrastructure, as McCarran is in good shape after a decade of construction designed to address the growing number of passengers.

Terminal 3 Key additions to McCarran’s aviation facilities include: Terminal 3, airfield enhancements, new roadways, a central utilities plant and a 6,000-vehicle capacity parking garage, all added as part of a $2.4 billion project completed in June 2012.

“The actual Terminal 3 project took six years and McCarran now has a beautiful facility to process passengers through,” enthuses Vassiliadis.

She is, however, quick to point out that the US economy nosedived just as the project launched, meaning that it was a big decision to continue with construction.

“It was difficult. We were very cautious, but we’d already broken ground and we decided to go ahead,” she tells Airport World. “It turned out to be the best decision we made. T3 opened last year and now we’re cautiously optimistic about the future.”

AIRPORT REPORT: RUNNING LAS VEGAS HEAD “Then we try to maximise revenues with food and beverages, specialty shops, parking and rental car fees,” she says.

In addition, Vassiliadis says McCarran is one of only two airports in the US which has gaming in the building — something that can provide a sizeable additional source of revenue, particularly as gaming is precisely the reason most people are heading to Las Vegas.

Today, Vassiliadis says, the airport’s revenue is an equal 50/50 split between aeronautical and non-aviation related revenues.

Customer service

Vassiliadis says that the latest IT systems were incorporated into the planning and design of the 1.9 million-square foot terminal in a bid to ensure high efficiency levels and reduced waiting times.

They include 100% common-use systems to enable airlines to time-share facilities, and new self-boarding gates to speed up boarding.

Automated aircraft docking systems also allow pilots to align with a passenger loading bridge, requiring minimal ramp staff support.

Signage is provided by more than 1,100 LCD and LED screens, giving passenger information, airline branding and real-time updates.

The new $1.2 billion terminal effectively increases McCarran’s capacity to 53mppa.

Having focused on expansion for the past 16 years, Vassiliadis reveals that the gateway will now concentrate its energies on becoming even more operationally efficient.

Revenue generation Before joining the Department of Aviation, Vassiliadis was director of finance for Clark County, which encompasses the city of Las Vegas. She wouldn’t have known it at the time, but it provided her with valuable experience for running McCarran.

Certain Clark County departments operated as enterprise funds, Vassiliadis explains, and so were supported entirely from user fees, not tax dollars. Likewise, McCarran’s budget is comprised of rates and airline charges.

Good customer service is imperative, notes Vassiliadis, who believes that it is the job of her staff and everyone at McCarran to ensure that all passengers enjoy a smooth and hassle free journey through the airport.

As part of this philosophy, she insists that McCarran always has clean, working restrooms; that retail and F&B concessions are open at the right times and are well stocked; and that merchandise and souvenirs are available.

“If they had a good time but didn’t have time to go shopping in Vegas, they can shop here and that’s what we want,” she smiles.

“So we provide the latest products, displayed in an inviting way.

That’s customer service.

“Similarly, if there’s a torn piece of carpet, we replace it. We also work hard with the airlines to ensure ticketing lanes and booths are open with sufficient time for people to check in and get to their gate.

“We are also aware that many of our visitors only fly once a year, so maybe a little more anxious than frequent flyers. The nature of these passengers is they want to get to the hold-room area as soon as possible before they start to relax. Once they see it, they’re fine and they go wandering.”

Vassiliadis says her customer service commitment is partly driven by the fact that McCarran is a major Origin and Destination (O&D) airport. Its status, she believes, means that passengers use every facet of McCarran, unlike at other bigger airports, where they are often just passing through.

“Atlanta, for example, is a much busier airport, but 65% of people are connecting so they don’t use ticketing, they don’t use the roadway system or parking,” Vasiliadis explains. “Here at McCarran, 80% of our customers use everything.”

Vassiliadis is a big fan of “a sense of place” offerings that make individual airports stand out from the crowd and enhance the passenger experience.

McCarran certainly feels like an extension of the Las Vegas experience and she cites Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas as an example of another gateway that does this well in terms of its locally flavoured live music and retail/F&B offering.

“Vegas certainly has its share of entertainment and characters that allow us to do things a little differently here,” says Vassiliadis, who notes that when TSA first introduced ‘tip screens’ explaining the new security procedures to passengers, McCarran did it “the Vegas way”.

“We didn’t have a film of a TSA agent explaining the procedure.

We had Vegas celebrities and personalities. And we’ll be updating those to reflect who’s currently playing on the strip.”

Travelling can be a stressful experience and it’s touches like these, she says, that help keep passenger anxiety levels down.

“Customer service encompasses every part of our operation,” adds Vassiliadis. “How do we do that? By getting my staff to take ownership. Then the results are going to show.”

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AIRPORT REPORT: LAS VEGAS

Route development Thirty-one airlines currently use McCarran, the most popular being the low-cost domestic carrier Southwest Airlines, followed by Delta, United and then American.

Asked what her philosophy for keeping the airlines happy and attracting more carriers, Vassiliadis believes that a sound financial base is key.

“We don’t want to have spikes in rates and charges from year to year because it’s hard for airlines to adjust to that. So each year we have a budget meeting and we present our airlines with a multi-year plan,” she says.

Domestically, the most popular routes at McCarran are to and from Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Chicago. For international travel the airport sees a lot of traffic between Las Vegas and Canada – particularly Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver; then, it’s Mexico City, and the United Kingdom from both Heathrow and Gatwick.

Currently, Korean Airlines provides McCarran’s only non-stop service from Asia and so the current focus is on getting more routes to the continent – primarily Japan and China, as Asian O&D has grown 32% in the past three years.

McCarran has seen a number of new airlines use the airport from Europe and Latin America. With the onset of the recession, it became more heavily involved in its partnership with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and put a greater focus on new international service.

Today, there is much more competition with other airports for new service, especially international routes, but McCarran has had an incentive programme whereby landing fees are waived on all operations in excess of what the airline provided in the same month of the prior year.

Additionally, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority has a programme, which offers co-op marketing funds to support new services, especially international.

In addition to passenger traffic, McCarran also handles around 200 million pounds of cargo a year, and while that may pale in comparison with some other large airports, Vassiliadis says the legacy carriers have found it to be profitable, and they see some interesting consignments go through.

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“Because of the conventions we have, we see exotic animals, electronic stuff for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), classic autos, fresh fish, and flowers that the hotels use,” she says.

Appeal of Las Vegas In addition to gambling, Las Vegas also has the largest single-level convention centre on the planet — with more than three million square feet of events space, which is the site for this year’s World Route Development Forum.

In February, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority approved the first phase of a $2.5 billion overhaul of the centre, the first major expansion in more than a decade.

Vassiliadis believes that from a destination point of view, no other city can offer the experiences than Vegas can. “You can still get a very reasonable room rate; you can still get value here,” she says.

“The appeal of Las Vegas as a destination is as strong as ever. There are so many different types of shows, not just headliners any more. We have smaller, more intimate venues too. As for shopping, we have boutiques to malls. Plus, there’s the dining , which has been its biggest hit after gaming. All the top chefs come here.

“People still come to Las Vegas with a vacation mentality. They’re going to splurge a little more, treat themselves to that fancy dinner.”

Future expansion McCarran is located near the famous Las Vegas Strip and therefore has only limited space available for expansion. As such, in the early 2000s, Clark County bought 6,500 acres of land about 30 miles southwest of the current airport and embarked on ambitious plans to develop it as a relief airport called Ivanpah Valley.

This was put on hold in 2010 in the economic downturn, but Vassiliadis says the land is being retained and preserved for future commercialisation.

“You never know,” she says. “With the flexibility T3 gives us at McCarran in terms of kerb space, parking, ticketing and baggage claim, we’re satisfied for now, but if this town ever has huge growth again like it did in the 2000s, the resorts will expand south.”

That’s when they may need Ivanpah. Vassiliadis says it’s prudent to look to the hotels and whether they’re expanding to determine what the airport should do next in terms of expansion.

“We want to be ready,” she says. “And it would be prudent of me to keep that site.”

AW

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Future thinking

Assistant director for facilitation & IT, Arturo GarciaAlonso, contemplates the importance of IT and the launch of ACI’s Airport IT Security Programme.

I

nformation Technology (IT) has become the enabler of virtually all airport business processes.

When Voltaire came up with his famous quote, “the possession of great power necessarily implies great responsibility”, he certainly was not referring to Airport Operational Data Bases, Flight Information Displays or Business Intelligence systems, but his statement fits perfectly when applied to the Airport IT field.

The increased dependency on IT is creating new and emerging security threats, growing points of vulnerability, and additional business continuity requirements.

This explains why airport IT specialists are requesting more resources and guidance to manage their IT security risks.

Taking these considerations into account, ACI, with the technical assistance of its World Airport IT Standing Committee, has launched the ACI Airport IT Security Programme, to provide a web-based software platform that allows airports to assess their IT security practices against the ISO 27002 Information Security standard and benchmark their results with those of other airports.

The tool gives airport operators the ability to create a profile on the system for each airport they operate. By using it, airports can review a series of statements inspired by the ISO 27002 Information Security standard and assess their readiness according to the COBIT maturity levels.

Additional features include the ability to visualise the statements and checklists using different mobile devices, which increases flexibility.

Once airports complete their readiness assessment, they will be able to benchmark themselves against other airports. Benchmarking will assist airports in identifying their strengths and weaknesses relative to their peers and in improving how they employ IT budgets in addressing information security.

Given the sensitivity of the information, all data and benchmarks are aggregated to preserve the anonymity of the airports involved, meaning individual security assessments cannot be traced back to the airport.

At this stage, 10 airports have joined the programme, and the first wave of benchmarking will commence in the final quarter of this year.

If you are interested in becoming a member of the ACI Airport IT Security Programme, or would like additional information, please contact: agarcia-alonso@aci.aero and/or rabboud@aci.aero AW

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Enabling growth Technology will be the key driver for the ‘airports of the future’, writes ARINC Asia-Pacific’s senior director for aviation and ground, systems solutions, Jeff Amiri.

T

he latest data from ACI, which records a 2.2% growth in air travel demand in July 2013 compared to a year ago, suggests a continuing upswing growth for all regions, with emerging markets such as Asia-Pacific leading the pack.

According to ACI World’s PaxFlash data, passenger traffic across the Asia-Pacific region soared by 7.2% in July, ensuring that it is 7.7% up for the year.

IATA agrees – its June figures, measured in revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs), revealing that Asia-Pacific carriers grew by 5.5% on international routes alone, accounting for nearly half of the May to June growth.

Growth is good, but it does come with challenges. For airports, it means that they are continuously faced with the uphill task of tackling congestion, maintaining and balancing security, coping with increased competition, and keeping the airport business in profit.

Responding to the above challenges, airports in the region and elsewhere have been trying to beef up their operations in recent years, not only to help them process large volumes of passengers more efficiently, but also to cope with the requirements and expectations of increasingly more informed, more travelled, more sophisticated, and more demanding passengers.

Besides looking to further strengthen their physical and IT infrastructure, airports continue to invest in remote check-in services and facilities, as a means to reduce congestion at check-in counters. However, they will need to do more, particularly as many evolve and transform themselves into airport cities or ‘aeropolises’ with their own economies revolving around the airport.

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Tomorrow’s airports will have to incorporate the latest infrastructures and technology to enable fast travel, and offer all the conveniences of everyday life, as people will live, work and play on site.

To take flight towards becoming airports of the future, they need to constantly re-assess their infrastructure, invest in new technology, and improve their business.

Airport transformations through IT To continue to evolve, airports need to keep their businesses in shape by moving beyond aeronautical revenue and generating other revenue streams.

This is achievable by investing in relevant new technologies that can help quicken the transformation into ‘airports of the future’. For instance, technologies finding their way into some of the more advanced and forward-looking airports around the world include: efficient and reliable communication between air-to-ground crews; passengers on air and their loved ones; passenger tracking; seamless mobility through reliable Wi-Fi connectivity; and more advanced analytics solutions.

From a passenger processing perspective, airports will continue to look for technology products and solutions that support seamless travel.

For instance, near-field communications (NFC) and smart cards provide capabilities that will shift the check-in process out of the airport and into the hands of the passenger.

These technologies enable payment of airport and airline services through smartphones, enhancing passenger satisfaction/experience as the travel process become more personal.

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Also, with the increasing sophistication and usage of smartphones, mobility solutions (as well as insights and analytics technologies), hard-copy boarding passes will soon be a thing of the past as all relevant information will be pushed into the passenger’s smartphone and saved onto smart cards.

This eliminates the need for queues, delivering efficiencies and enhancing passenger convenience.

With continued sophistication of global positioning systems (GPS) and other location-based solutions such as wayfinding, combined with insights and analytics technologies, gone will be the traditional paging and public address systems at the airport.

In its place will be a passenger tracking system that will send out relevant alerts to the passenger’s smartphone, such as how many more minutes to boarding time, boarding gate location, etc.

Depending on the passenger’s exact location and distance to the boarding gate, he/she will then be able to find out the nearest way to the gate.

Likewise, airlines will be able to tell if a passenger is able to make it to his/her flight in time, and therefore make relevant decisions. This will lessen, if not completely eliminate, flight delays caused by passengers who can’t make it to the boarding gate on time.

For instance, the Singapore government’s expansion plans for Changi Airport, called Project Jewel, underpins the ongoing evolution of airports into aeropolises. In time, revenue from Project Jewel will undoubtedly contribute a substantial amount to the country’s economy.

Already an aviation hub in the region, there will be even more reasons for passengers around the world to visit Singapore and/or make it a transit point to and from their final destinations.

More importantly, Project Jewel represents a radical transformation of the passenger experience at the airport, making it enjoyable, fast and seamless. The airport of the future, then, truly becomes an area where one can live, work and play.

Critical success factors All technologies that drive the ‘airports of the future’ have their own roles to play. However, critical to every IT function within the system is a good balance of security measures to mitigate fraud and threats, from hardware to software, to the network infrastructure, to physical screening by relevant airport authorities.

Also, it is vital not to underestimate the importance of backup and redundancy systems, recovery plans, reliable network connectivity and seamless communications technology across the whole aviation eco-system connected to the airport.

From a passenger processing perspective, airports will continue to look for technology products and solutions that support seamless travel Fuelling growth beyond aeronautical revenue Although there is a symbiotic relationship between airline growth and airports, the latter needs to look at generating new sources of income beyond aeronautical revenue.

Airports are continuing to invest in developing ‘aerotropolises’, which generate sources of revenue and economies within the periphery of the airport. These include renting out office space, building shopping malls and retail outlets, convention centres, hotels, food and recreation, theme parks and the like, all of which are aimed at generating nonaeronautical revenue.

Future investments in auto-boarding and auto-bagdrop systems will open additional opportunities for airports to partner with new tenants, airlines, clients and other business entities to help speed up check-in processes and reduce or completely eliminate queues and congestion.

With auto-boarding and auto-bagdrop systems in place, passengers will spend less time in check-in/boarding queues, and more time shopping or doing other things in different areas within the aerotropolis.

Airports will also benefit from auto-bagdrops by enabling passengers to interact with bagdrop mechanisms that calculate baggage weight and allow them to pay for excess baggage through bagdrop systems, using various payment methods such as credit cards or through their mobile phones.

With combined efficiencies made possible through the use of modern and relevant technology, airports should be able to reduce cost significantly by eliminating redundancies and using resources in other areas of need.

As airport infrastructure continues to improve and results of IT efficiencies become clear, we’ll see retail areas expanding, and check-in areas shrinking. Ultimately, all these work towards enhancing passenger satisfaction.

With potentially many different things to do at airports in the future, passengers and visitors alike will surely no longer be able to claim that airports are boring!

Airports and airlines continue to invest in IT systems to cover passenger facilities and the ‘live, work and play’ areas. For instance, the idea of having bowling alleys, swimming pools, entertainment facilities, food and beverage areas, gardens and other recreation facilities, are all founded on a common goal: to encourage visitors to spend money.

Overall, as passengers become savvier, airports of all sizes and geographic locations will do well to recognise the role of IT and start planning now.

Fundamental to some airports’ strategic approach to improving their IT implementations and processes include outsourcing their IT function so they can focus on their core business.

These include Hong Kong and Incheon airports in Hong Kong and South Korea respectively, to name a couple. In this case, the role of IT partners is critical to an airport’s success.

Likewise, smaller airports also need to start investing in relevant technology to help increase tourism in any country.

ARINC will continue to play a major role in helping airports transform into the ‘airports of the future’ by delivering innovative and cutting-edge technology to fuel the growth of the aviation industry.

AW

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Going mobile Ever-inventive brands are using smartphones to connect with passengers at airports and on almost every stage of their journey, writes Jeremy Corfield.

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ree airport Wi-Fi is widespread, inflight connectivity is on the increase, and airlines, airports and airport retailers communicate with passengers via apps and mobile-optimised sites.

The mobile journey starts with researching travel, and increasingly, it continues with booking via mobile. Travellers use mobiles before their journey, at the airport, and at their destination.

There are numerous statistics showing airports providing innovation in mobile connections, having huge numbers of Twitter followers and receiving many thousands of Facebook and Foursquare check-ins.

However, one area of the airport commercial space that is yet to see widespread engagement with mobile phones is airport advertising.

That’s starting to change, with airport advertising businesses improving their investment in mobile solutions, and brands and agencies beginning to experiment more broadly.

As with any advertising, airport advertising must be relevant, timely and accessible. In an airport setting, this means giving passengers an engaging experience, and taking a mobile-centric approach can really help to achieve that.

People have clear preferences for the technologies they use, and the way they use them. The mobile experience is now very intuitive, and that’s because most people customise their mobile use and behaviours to their own needs.

They choose the device, plan, apps and tools that work for them.

So advertisers and airports that recognise this – and reflect it in their offer – will be the most successful.

Interactive and mobile advertising can play a meaningful role in improving the customer experience in an airport, by giving passengers a fun, valuable, rewarding or memorable moment that boosts their enjoyment of the travel experience.

Three recent airport campaigns encapsulate the value of brands, agencies and airport advertising companies working together to deliver interesting and engaging experiences for passengers.

Nice Cote d’Azur Airport – TOTAL In the lead-up to the Monaco Grand Prix earlier this year, TOTAL delivered a fantastic experiential campaign at Nice Cote d’Azur Airport.

As well as two simulators fitted with the F1 computer game, passengers could visit a ‘green screen’ to have their photos taken ‘with’ Romain Grosjean.

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They could collect a print, or upload the image to social media via their own phones or using iPads placed around the stand, which also featured other games and a competition. Additionally, hostesses were on-hand to provide support and answer questions.

A key aspect of this campaign was the integration of the interactive experience within a broader campaign that reached the passenger at several points on their journey.

The campaign started at the station with floor media, adgates and train cards, then built further through check-in, to departures, and on to the gate. This was complemented with advertising on Nice Airport’s free Wi-Fi pages, boarding passes and culminated in onboard media on seatback tables and in inflight magazines.

This is a great example of how the full strength of the airport environment can be leveraged; with a true understanding of the audience and how they use the airport, a strong campaign can achieve maximum impact.

What can airports learn from this campaign? Delivering entertaining and engaging experiential campaigns in an airport is a complex business.

A high-profile promotional space, qualified airside staff, data, power and free Wi-Fi had to be available. It also required a robust media inventory with the ability to trace the passenger journey, allowing the advertiser to build awareness and excitement about the experiential zone prior to passengers arriving.

Clearly there is direct commercial benefit in terms of media income from a campaign like this, but the broader airport benefit is the highlight they have helped create in the passenger journey and the social and word-of-mouth chatter the campaign generated.

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY For this campaign to have real scale, and to justify the investment in creative time and cost, a multi-airport buy was a must for the advertiser. Having an agile and outcome-focused airport advertising company, and a specialist airport planning agency were very important factors in bringing the O2 client vision to life.

The campaign also required a consistent and flexible approach from the airports involved. Logistics needed to be manageable, and that necessitated a broadly consistent offering from airport to airport.

Manchester and Gatwick, in particular, have taken a long-term view in making valuable airside space available for large-scale interactive touch walls.

Australian airports – GOOGLE

UK airports – O2 Some of the UK’s busiest airports were the perfect platform for a pan-regional, cross-media campaign by O2 promoting their European data-roaming offer.

Timed to coincide with the peak summer holiday period, this campaign was mobile-enabled, and at Manchester and Gatwick airports, was totally integrated with the airports’ digital walls.

As well as being able to enter a competition, passengers could also upload and edit photos for real-time viewing via Instagram and Twitter, using #O2Travel. The O2 Travel campaign ran at major UK airports, the Euro Star and Euro Tunnel.

Again, passengers were targeted at key touch-points in their entire journey. This started with branded boarding passes along with floor media at London rail stations feeding the major airport train express services, vinyl-wrapped ticket gates and airport express train cards.

It continued through to every touch point at the airport from drop-off and check-in to departure gate, using small format digital screens alongside giant standout lightboxes. Media also included branding on the airports’ free internet stations and on the Wi-Fi landing pages.

With some 15,000 interactions per week in Manchester and Gatwick alone, it’s clear that this campaign resonated with the travelling public by ‘giving something back’.

Passengers had a real-time opportunity to do something fun and simple, and by making the campaign mobile-focused, O2 ensured that the campaign reached people off-airport via social media as well as the primary on-airport target audiences.

A recent world-first airport advertising programme by Google is a great example of airports and their advertising partners acting as enablers for truly interesting, engaging and relevant activity in the terminal.

The campaign for the Google Play Store allowed passengers to use their mobile phones as remote control devices, taking control of 39 digital advertising panels at Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney airports.

As well as interacting with Google Play Store content, Android phone users could also then download selected books, movies, music, magazines and apps directly to their phone using free Wi-Fi. This campaign is a fantastic example of how airport advertising with a mobile focus can deliver genuine value and benefit to passengers.

Several important building blocks were put in place to enable delivery of this programme: 1. The airport advertising concessionaire invested heavily in a substantial estate of digital displays across a number of airports 2. Their airport partners encouraged this investment, and provided access to high-impact advertising locations throughout the terminal 3. The airport put free Wi-Fi in place. It’s unlikely this campaign would have been so effective if passengers had been asked to pay for the Wi-Fi service In each of these three case studies, there are clear themes.

Preparation and a strategic outlook from the airports was vital.

Airport advertising businesses with commitment and access to capital were central.

The importance of good creative ideas (and the drive of agencies) is clear to see, but without the inclusion of a mobile-centric, customerdriven mindset, focused on delivering something valuable, entertaining and memorable to the passenger, these campaigns would have been less remarkable.

Thinking about, and focusing on, the connected traveller can help airports deliver an enjoyable in-terminal experience, which passengers will remember and want to tell their friends about.

AW

About the author Jeremy Corfield is director of Concession Planning International Australia Pty Ltd. He can be contacted at jeremycorfield@concession-planning.com or www.concession-planning.com

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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Power to the people Alaistair Deacon discusses the importance of enhancing the passenger experience through collaborative decision making.

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assenger experience is the great differentiator of the current aviation landscape. It doesn’t matter if you’re an airport, airline, global hub or regional carrier, the race to create a premier passenger experience is well and truly on.

The key to an improved passenger experience is collaboration between the airport and its various stakeholders: airlines, security, customs, retail and so on.

If collaboration is so critical, then why is the aircraft turnaround process the only key part mapped out to a consistent standard via Collaborative Decision Making (CDM)?

If the passenger experience was placed front and centre in the CDM process, the operational, commercial and competitive benefits would be self-evident.

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Traditional CDM Across the aviation industry, the term CDM is thrown around in the same way that the IT industry uses ‘Cloud’, ‘Big Data’ and ‘Mobile’. Key themes and ideas that are critical for the advancement of that particular industry, but poorly defined, understood and implemented in practice.

More often than not, CDM is used with reference limited to air traffic control and aircraft turnaround times. To the European airports and airlines, CDM means ‘A-CDM” (Airport-CDM) as clearly defined by EUROCONTROL and its European partners.

This gives a common reference model for the aircraft turnaround process upon which everyone can agree. Importantly, this standardisation of milestones allows the different stakeholders to agree on what constitutes the key turnaround processes.

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

passenger experience than just the aircraft turnaround and the efficiency of airline arrivals and departures.

In fact, limiting the passenger process to a single milestone in the A-CDM model (11- Boarding) should be a point of concern for most operators.

There is no point in airports and airlines collaborating to improve turnaround if a lack of security staff or blockage on the airport approach road means that passengers aren’t getting to the gate on time.

This key change in mindset could in fact lead to improved passenger experience, and greater cost efficiency across the airport.

Awareness of the limited impact of the A-CDM milestones on the passenger experience led my company, the Amor Group, to coin the phrase ‘T-CDM’ (Terminal-CDM) with its customers.

In a passenger-centric view of the airport process, T-CDM requires an absolute need to focus more on passenger experience.

To support T-CDM, we created the ACDB (the Airport Collaboration Database), which is basically the ‘passenger process’ cousin to the more traditional Airport Operational Database (AODB).

The ACDB relies on the development and deployment of passenger tracking and service delivery measurement technologies, which are becoming more prevalent across many airports. This in turn feeds the milestones and KPIs that measure the efficiency of the T-CDM model.

Great. So that’s us capturing the passenger in the CDM process, but we’ve also involved the airport operator, the airlines, ATC, handling agents and – on some rare occasions – the security services and government agencies.

How about making the passenger an active participant in the CDM process?

Arise, P-CDM

However, it’s more than a little troubling that the costs for achieving A-CDM’s goals – to improve aircraft turnaround performance and feed into the Air Traffic Control (ATC) network operations optimisation, for example – are often picked up by the airport.

Crossing the Atlantic, CDM, in the context of the FAA NextGen initiatives, is about sharing a view of the National Airspace System (NAS). Again, though, this takes a very Air Traffic Flow Management view of the operation.

For the rest of the world, they’re left to adopt the pieces of A-CDM and NextGen that are seen as applicable and beneficial to their operation.

How does all of this contribute to a smoother, more enjoyable experience for the passenger and, critically, bring about a clear and major commercial upside for the airports?

Show me the passenger Looking across the complete range of airport processes – check-in, security, immigration, baggage, retail – there is so much more to the

Whether it’s a frequent flyer or occasional holidaymaker, the need to integrate passengers across all profiles, demographics and experience into the process has never been greater.

We like to label this involvement Passenger-CDM or P-CDM. P-CDM, as an effective concept, will eventually and inevitably come through the extension of a greater number of services onto passengers’ mobile devices.

The enabling technology is for the mobile devices to be both location and context aware, so that passengers are fully informed on their journey, with their progress fed back into the overall airport collaboration process.

I can’t be alone in wanting to decide on my airport experience by collaborating with the airport and my airline in a single portal, and not multiple apps on my smartphone.

If the airline and airport can give me a common, joined-up view of my experience though the complete journey, I’ll happily share my status information back with them.

In return, the airport gets process updates, ensuring I, as the passenger, am progressing with my journey to the gate.

Concurrently, the airline receives real-time status updates on, for example, any potential late-arriving transfer passengers delaying departure.

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SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY This can be started, even with today’s mobile technology, and good progress can be achieved. Indeed, the key to providing a credible final solution is: • Sharing (key) passenger information between the various stakeholders • Increasing in the location awareness of mobile devices (even within the airport) • The widespread use of mobile apps by passengers As a multitude of studies have shown, all of these are progressing rapidly and will mature significantly over the short three to five year horizon. However, until the airports and airlines can share key passenger information, and provide each and every passenger with all the information at the point of need, we’ll just remain a passive participant in our journeys.

Passenger-CDM in practice Consider a consolidated mobile application that provides the passenger with a joined-up view of their complete journey, improving the overall experience.

One that plays the role of train or car park ticket, check-in platform and boarding pass, passenger flow and behaviour analysis tool, e-wallet, frequent flyer card, luggage tracker, flight information screen, ancillary service booking platform, discount card for retail outlets and so on.

The underlying benefits for the airport are massive, and by gaining a more complete understanding of passenger behaviour, airports can ensure the provision of appropriate products and services and more streamlined operations.

Retail revenues Non-aeronautical revenues are key when it comes to determining the profitability of an airport. For the most part, aeronautical activities, and their subsequent revenues, tend to be fixed, and provide little scope for immediate, short-term growth.

With this in mind, airports must be proactive in generating maximum return from their non-aeronautical operations.

Retail contributes approximately 40% of typical airport revenue, offering up the most extensive possibilities for growth. It is widely acknowledged that an increased airside dwell time will lead to increased retail spend, so placing a greater emphasis on the role of the passenger in the overall process is imperative.

True P-CDM would help airports fully understand the impact of passenger demographics, behaviours and flow, store choices, layouts and advertising offers on retail revenue.

If information is available to share from a mobile device, airport retail outlets could also benefit from the ability to map out customer spend, right down to what any given ‘type’ of passenger is buying and when.

If you consider that an airport will lose approximately €1 in retail revenue for every minute a passenger spends in a security queue, integrating the passenger into an end-to-end view of CDM starts to make increasingly simple financial sense.

Operational efficiency This concept of personalised services could reach even further.

Location-based services could allow airports to pinpoint the whereabouts of a mobile device (and therefore the distance of the passenger from their gate), and allow for the provision of personalised

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information to the passenger and improved decision making for aircraft turnaround.

Transfer passengers with a short connection could automatically be identified and routed to the fast track lane; frequent flyers the same.

Security and anonymity of the information is of course crucial, but with appropriate measures in place, the potential commercial benefits are clear.

Fully-fledged, automated Passenger CDM is undoubtedly the future, but let’s not view P-CDM as some far-off concept.

Some of the world’s leading operators are already putting the passenger front and centre as they aim to become the premier airport of choice in their respective markets.

Dubai is leading the way in the Middle East with the world’s largest airport service measurement progamme. Toronto Pearson sees guest experience as the key enabler of its strategy to become North America’s number one international airport. Meanwhile, Oslo and Copenhagen – perennial winners of the most efficient airports in Europe – are placing passenger-centric initiatives at the heart of their operations.

It’s been said that A-CDM reads like a first step to operational excellence for an airport. Clearly all that it is missing is the focus on the terminal and passenger within.

Now, the aviation supply chain is filling the gap and providing a roadmap to achieving that ultimate aim, which is to deliver a truly excellent end-to-end passenger experience.

Welcome, P-CDM. We’ve been waiting for you.

AW

About the author Alaistair Deacon, chief aviation technologist at the Amor Group. http://www.amorgroup.com

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Change for good Eric Miart provides a progress report on Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) and discusses the reasons for its comparatively slow uptake outside of Europe.

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ow do we facilitate better co-ordination and co-operation among airport partners for the large benefit of all?

This is arguably the last frontier or new challenge for all airports around the world. Whatever we call it, Airport Collaborative Decision Making – A-CDM for short – is already a reality following its successful implementation at key European airports.

But what about the rest of the world, you may well ask?

Over the years, EUROCONTROL has taken Airport CDM from concept to reality and has developed and operationally validated a number of A-CDM elements, such as information sharing, variable taxi time calculations, milestones approach, collaborative management of flight updates, and pre-departure sequence in adverse weather conditions.

Indeed, it has proactively encouraged most, if not all European airports, to implement Airport CDM locally.

In Europe, the concept of A-CDM is successfully bringing all the main airport partners together to share operational data in a transparent and efficient way.

This effectively means air traffic control (ATC), aircraft operators, airlines, EUROCONTROL’s Network Manager Operations Centre [formerly Network Manager-Central Flow Management Unit] and ground handlers.

As a result, in Europe, A-CDM is now a critical element in enhancing airport operations and is seen as the driver and mechanism for dynamically enhancing the integration of airports into the network capacity management process. It further ensures that available and relevant airport data from strategic to tactical is exchanged efficiently with the ATM network.

The implementation of the flight updates concept will be the catalyst for this process, mainly through enhanced data exchange between airports and the ATM network partners.

Implementation of A-CDM at European airports is well under way, and fully supportive of the SESAR initiative. However, while Europe seems to be well engaged in A-CDM implementation (leading to local airport and ATM network potential benefits) the rest of the world seems to be lagging behind.

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Airport governing body ACI and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO) – on behalf of the world’s air navigation service providers (ANSPs) and air traffic management (ATM) network – were among the first to realise the potential benefits of having A-CDM and CDM implemented in other regions of the world outside Europe.

Indeed, in June 2012, the organisations signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) in order to co-operate and co-ordinate their respective initiatives aiming at implementing A-CDM and CDM worldwide. Actually, the co-ordination is already taking place, although it is limited to just a few initiatives. It should not be forgotten that while ACI looks mainly at the benefits to airports in supporting A-CDM implementation, CANSO looks after ATM network and ATFCM benefits.

However, both are aware that A-CDM’s benefits will reciprocally benefit all ATM partners, including the aircraft operators and airlines, bringing them into line with IATA, which has its own CDM objectives.

ICAO is also committed to promoting and supporting A-CDM and CDM implementation worldwide. It wishes to harmonise A-CDM & CDM operational procedures and standards through developing ICAO A-CDM ad hoc documentation.

Discussions are progressing well at ICAO Montréal. Nevertheless, the path is still very slow concerning the set-up of ICAO working groups in charge of development.

Why implement A-CDM? There are a number of credible arguments in favour of implementing A-CDM. For instance, when an airport decides not to implement A-CDM it is effectively restricting its growth.

How? Well, maintaining the status quo may on the face of it mean business as usual, but it also means missed opportunities and failing to put the airport in a position to beat future challenges.

It may sound dramatic, but such a stance could be the first step towards becoming a future “second class airport”.

On the contrary, taking the decision to implement A-CDM will put an airport in the position to meet and beat coming challenges; improve its operational and cost efficiency; get most – if not all – the benefits of A-CDM; and increase the chance of remaining or becoming a “first class airport”.

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One should not forget the benefits are huge. Among the most important ones, A-CDM will help maximise an airport’s throughput and operational/cost efficiency.

It will help aircraft operators meet their planned schedule and allow handling agents to maximise their resource management usage and maintain Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

It will also help local ANSPs to maintain safety levels and make maximum use of airport runways and taxiways while allowing neighbouring ACCs (and the ATM network) to benefit from better and more accurate flight information. All this leads to better planning and better air traffic flow and capacity management.

Last but not least, A-CDM will benefit the environment through helping reduce noise and emissions.

Additionally, the advantages for both the airports and the ATM network will start to multiply as more and more airports implement A-CDM.

A-CDM implementation outside Europe Although Airport CDM is now becoming a well-known concept in Europe, outside of the continent it is a different matter.

True, a growing number of non-Europeans are learning about it at conferences or industry events, reading magazine articles or seeing A-CDM in action during a visit to a European airport, but uptake is proving to be painfully slow.

Actually, quite a few reasons exist why A-CDM implementation is slow to take off outside Europe. Among them is whether the key decision makers at airports have a reasonable knowledge of A-CDM. Most people looking at A-CDM will generally underestimate the difficulties and pre-requisites required for local implementation.

Obviously, making sure all airport CDM partners (from the CEO and the Board to operational local management) understand it and have committed to its implementation is crucial.

It is also important to establish an organisational structure for the successful implementation of A-CDM and to agree (and put in place) common objectives for all partners.

In the same vein, management teams may also underestimate the length of time it will take for initial set-up and full implementation of A-CDM at their airport.

Despite the European success story, the current lack of documentation and standards at ICAO level, as well as the specifics of the US market with regard the adoption of A-CDM, are not working in favour of supporting global implementation outside Europe.

All those elements mean that it is common for local airport decision-makers to put A-CDM on hold until they get more information and understanding about it before making a commitment.

Reasons for hope Despite the current situation outside of Europe with regard to A-CDM implementation, there are, however, still reasons for hope.

Among these reasons is the fact the world aviation industry is constantly looking to improve its operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and A-CDM is certainly one of the ways to achieve these goals.

Indeed, common sense and good management principles should naturally lead to decision-makers moving towards A-CDM implementation.

Discussions are also progressing well between ICAO, CANSO, IATA and Europe (SESAR, EUROCONTROL) with regards to developing A-CDM documentation at ICAO level.

Although limited in terms of co-ordination and co-operation, there are also separate initiatives being undertaken by ACI, CANSO and IATA in a bid to promote, develop and support A-CDM and CDM implementation worldwide.

In the coming months and years, it will be interesting to see whether those organisations will garner enough member support to allocate resources (at both human and financial level) to implement A-CDM on a global scale.

With so many obvious benefits to both airports and the ATM network, I am confident that the right decisions will be taken on A-CDM sooner rather than later.

AW

About the author Eric Miart is a senior consultant, ATM and airport operations expert. He can be contacted via email at eric.miart@gmail.com

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Bank on data Better analysis of sales data can help airports boost retail revenues and customer satisfaction levels, writes John de Giorgio.

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n the face of ever-increasing pressure from the airlines to keep aviation costs down, a growing number of airports are turning to - and relying upon - non-aeronautical revenue sources to sustain their operations.

Indeed, ACI’s 2012 Airport Economics Report shows that the industry continues to derive an increasing proportion of its revenue from the non-aviation sector, with an estimated $46 billion annually, or 44% of all global airport revenues, earned from these sources.

With some regional disparities and specific airports in each region being more successful in this area, pole position from among the different sources of non-aeronautical revenues tends to be either retail and F&B or car parking.

Of course, like any other business, airports are striving to increase revenue streams – and subsequently their profitability – but some increases have high associated acquisition costs.

This article highlights the low-hanging fruit of the airport industry, where improvements to the bottom line are most tangible for the least effort.

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Aviation sector revenues are, of course, principally based on passenger fees and landing charges. In fact, we know that some airports are almost totally dependent upon passenger fees, which means that the only way they can realistically increase their revenues is to increase the fee – not a very sustainable strategy in the current climate – or handle more traffic.

However, accommodating more flights or passengers can be very costly to an airport depending on its capacity. It may, for example, mean that the airport has to increase the number of security lanes, and invest in new ground handling equipment, check-in facilities or aerobridges, and – in extreme cases – even terminals and runways.

Increasing passengers would also certainly result in a need to increase staff.

All these factors ensure that accommodating more revenueenhancing passengers can be expensive, with only a relatively small proportion of the increased revenue trickling down to the bottom line.

Turning to the non-aviation sources of revenue, retail/F&B, car parking and sometimes car rentals are the primary revenue streams

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY globally, with foreign exchange and banking services, vending machines, property leasing, hotels and lounges topping these up.

Increased car parking revenues can usually be achieved by an upturn in passengers – and subsequently more visitors using the airport’s facilities – or by becoming more successful at getting passengers to use its car parks.

Increasing passengers, however, can be costly. An increase in conversion rates is often tied to special promotional fees and increased interaction with passengers in advance of when they are flying. In either case, capacity increases invariably need to be supported by infrastructure investments and the use of additional land on-site, both of which can come with a high-price tag related to this form of revenue.

Increasing retail/F&B revenues can be achieved by any combination of expanding the concession footprint in a terminal and/or improving the performance of the airport’s outlet-derived revenues.

Expanding the retail footprint is itself costly and capital intensive.

In addition, while newer airport terminals may have been designed with retail and F&B in mind, some of the older terminals were just not optimised for these activities and significant changes may be required.

Another issue to consider is the fact that diseconomies of scale operate in the retail and F&B sector. Doubling the supply of retail square metres will not necessarily result in a doubling of sales, for instance. After all, the passenger propensity for purchase is finite, and there are well known guidelines established for square metres of retail space per million passenger throughput.

The low-hanging fruit So where is the low-hanging fruit in the airport industry? I believe that the greatest bang for the buck can be obtained by focusing on the opportunity to improve the performance of the existing retail and F&B operators.

This can be done usually with modest investment and thus, each percentage increase in performance goes almost entirely to the bottom line profitability of the airport terminal.

There are, of course, many opportunities for improvement, including focusing on upselling greater sales per passenger; optimising the product mix for the profile of passenger to maximise revenue; and targeting both the higher spenders and non-spenders by focusing on conversion.

Others include developing the route mix to generate more revenues (non-EU flights generate higher margins on duty free tobacco and liquor, for example), and monitoring and maximising conversion rates of people who walk past a store compared to those entering and then buying either by design or on impulse.

Leveraging opportunities for more dynamic advertising (with targeted promotions in specific parts of the terminal), and targeting passengers on a specific flight, is another method used by airports to boost retail/F&B revenues. The list goes on.

However, in all cases, to be successful they really require a deep understanding of the retail sales patterns gained through measurement. The old adage of not being able to manage what you do not measure is plainly true in this case.

Image courtesy of Incheon International Airport.

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The norm currently among most airports, both small and large, is that they collect their concessionaire sales data in a manner that reflects how they bill their concession agreements.

Typically, monthly sales by category are usually collected through a rather unstructured series of e-mails and spreadsheets. Indeed, monitoring what concessionaires have reported, and which have not, increases the difficulty of this process.

Clearly, the most efficient and beneficial way to do this for the airport would be the collection of transaction level details, with airside transactions being tagged to the flight of the departing or arriving passenger.

Doing this would enable a rich analysis of sales-per-passenger by flight, destination, terminal zone, terminal, product category, shop category, individual shops and many other key performance indicators (KPIs).

For instance, benchmarking shops in a similar shop category (such as Luxury Retail or Women’s Fashion) against each other for their performance on different destinations enables an airport’s commercial team to identify weaker concessions, and provides an opportunity to work with the concessionaire to identify why they may be under performing on sales to particular destinations.

Perhaps it may be a mismatch in the product mix for the profile passenger, or the language skills of their staff.

Identifying the revenue per passenger (not just the sales per passenger) on a specific carrier or route allows an airport to improve its negotiations with a carrier developing a new route.

Digital advertising is another potential beneficiary of improved data analysis. Whereas old style advertising was fixed for a month or longer, digital advertising opens up the possibility of running very short but highly targeted campaigns.

An example of this might be running a campaign for a specific brand of whisky close to a gate handling flights to a Japanese destination in the four hours prior to departure.

By collecting sales data at a detailed level, you can track the sales-per-passenger of the whisky category – and even possibly the particular advertised whisky – for those hours and monitor any changes to buying patterns of the brand and the category when the advertisement is being run.

The exact impact of the campaign can thus be measured and the return on the advertising investment calculated.

This data can then be used to persuade the brand to co-market other campaigns for the mutual benefit of airport, concessionaire and brand.

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The way forward?

While most airports recognise that such a data sharing strategy offers the key to performance success, many think they will not be able to convince their concessionaires to share the data.

However, this is already changing as airports realise that they can no longer afford to ignore the benefits. In fact, it is possible that many of the airports unable to currently impose data sharing (due to the terms of existing concessionaire contracts) will rectify the situation when contracts are up for renewal.

Concessionaires are naturally protective of their data, not because they fear that it will be leaked to competitors, but because they are aware that this level of visibility of their sales will empower the airport to better understand the detailed sales patterns. It will also allow airports to better audit the sales data being reported by the concessionaires.

Of course, while collection of the detailed sales data offers enormous benefits, even collecting daily category totals are significantly better than monthly totals, and offer significant analysis capabilities, setting the stage for more detailed data collection when contracts are renegotiated.

Another consideration is the fact that those airports that implement automated systems to manage their data collection also reduce the touch-costs associated with such a process.

It is not just airports that reap the rewards, as it allows retailers and F&B operators access to non-sensitive business intelligence gained from such analysis, empowering their concessionaires to perform better for the mutual benefit of both parties.

So, get more out of the retail and F&B sector not by squeezing the concessionaires’ margins, but by working together to help them improve their performance by automating the collection of detailed sales data. Implementing a business intelligence platform will allow you to better understand the sales patterns and enable implementation of more effective tactics.

This is the low-hanging fruit of the airport industry. Any percentage improvement in this sector will go straight to your bottom line.

AW

About the author John de Giorgio is CEO of Concessionaire Analyzer+, a solution that allows airports to manage and boost their non-aviation sector revenues. He can be contacted at jdg@concessionaireanalyzer.com

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Fast times Does near field communication (NFC) hold the key to faster passenger processing and delivering the dream of seamless travel? Renaud Irminger shares his insights.

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e are well on the way to truly paperless travel,” so said the then IATA director general, Giovanni Bisignani, in December 2010. Airlines had just completed their conversion to 2D barcoded boarding passes (BCBPs).

Bisignani, with one eye on the future, was outlining the next logical step – putting the barcode on a mobile device.

Fast forward to today and airlines have enthusiastically embraced mobile boarding passes, with the majority offering the option, according to SITA’s 2013 Airline IT Trends Survey.

But it has not been all clear skies, and privately some airports are expressing doubts about how effective mobile BCBPs are for high-speed processing of passengers through the airport.

Issues to be addressed There are a number of deficiencies. For a start, the BCBP can only be scanned when visible on the phone’s screen. That means the passenger has to spend time preparing by unlocking their phone and finding the barcode.

The phone also needs to be kept ‘alive’ to avoid it going into power saving mode at the moment of scanning.

Another issue is that for the optical scanner to read the image correctly, it must be presented at exactly the right angle. The fast uptake of smartphones with their highly reflective screens and internal

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gyroscope (that can suddenly switch the direction of viewing content), is adding to the difficulty.

In essence, mobile BCBPs lack the ‘first time, every time’ requirement needed for fast passenger throughput at a busy airport, and there are signs passengers have become resistant to using a phone to board because of the perceived complexity and a lack of confidence in the phone itself.

People have to open the airline application or go to an SMS to upload the barcode to the screen. Sometimes, they need mobile connectivity, all of which takes time.

Some airports are telling us that if mobile boarding passes are used by 40% to 50% of passengers – today the figure is in under 10% – they will experience major issues with queues.

And in countries such as India, it is not uncommon to show the boarding pass more than ten times before reaching the aircraft.

The issue of retrieving the boarding pass on the phone is starting to be addressed, and in this regard, Apple’s Passbook is a step forward. It uses GPS and notification functionality on the iPhone to display the boarding pass on the screen when the passenger enters the airport. But it happens only at this point.

This innovation is good and goes in the right direction. It will help more passengers go mobile and travel paperless, but it doesn’t fully solve the issue of the passenger who has to retrieve their boarding pass multiple times.

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2D or not 2D It has left some in the industry wondering whether to stick with the printed 2D BCBPs which work very well with existing technology, or take a step forward and go with the much-talked-about near field communication (NFC).

NFC works by putting two radio frequency chips close together, which automatically connect when they detect each other. It promises to finally deliver on Bisignani’s vision of seamless travel.

With a SIM card, it is secure, fast, and easy to use. NFC also has a big advantage over 2D barcode technology on a phone because it enables faster boarding.

Passengers can transmit a boarding pass using NFC by just tapping the back of the phone on the reader.

Japan Airlines (JAL), which introduced the first NFC boarding passes, has demonstrated that it can board 450 passengers in just 10 minutes if 70% of the passengers use NFC technology and the remainder use printed barcoded boarding passes.

Another advantage of NFC over mobile 2D barcodes is that the boarding pass can be transmitted even when the phone is switched off or out of battery power. This can reduce last minute anxiety for passengers, which adds to a more enjoyable travel experience.

What’s the hold up?

Given the benefits, you would expect the industry to rush to embrace NFC, but that’s not the case.

Outside of airlines and airports, adoption in the wider world is hampered by a lack of NFC-capable mobile phones, disagreement over standards by entrenched stakeholders, and an unclear value proposition for retailers due to the high cost of point-of-sale (POS) equipment.

NFC is currently not widely embraced by consumers, except in Japan, even though it has existed in one form or another for more than 10 years. Mobile payments could be the catalyst, but it hasn’t happened yet.

In addition, for the boarding pass to transmit to the reader without power, it needs to be stored on a secure element in the NFC phone, normally the SIM card, and communicate in a special manner termed card-emulation mode.

This allows the reader to take data from a phone without requiring the phone user to initiate the process, or even take any active part in the process.

However, the secure element of mobile phones is tightly controlled by mobile operators so putting boarding passes onto SIM cards adds complexity for airlines, and could incur a fee.

Airports and airlines are understandably hesitant to invest in a new technology that is still far from mass uptake and carries the risk of being overtaken by the rapid pace of consumer innovation.

Results from the latest Airline IT Trends Survey indicate that the majority of airlines are taking a wait-and-see approach to utilising NFC technology for the next generation of passenger processing.

This lack of commitment to NFC does little to encourage airports to invest in it even though widespread deployment across the industry will require an airport-led common-use approach to the technology.

NFC decision day is close Despite the issues that have dogged progress, there are signs that the technology is reaching a tipping point. There are now more than 100 phone models on the market with NFC capability, plus a growing number of tablets and other wireless devices.

Analysts estimate there may be as many as 300 million NFC smartphones, tablets and eReaders sold in 2013. For the air transport industry, decision time on NFC is nearing.

To justify the costs of rollout and to deliver real benefits, I believe NFC must simplify the passenger experience, and not just be a technology swap.

Reducing the passenger effort to a simple ‘tap and go’ is critical. If it is more complex than this single step, such as ‘tap and confirm’ or ‘tap and enter’, it will be less compelling for the industry and passengers.

Standards will also be required to ensure the technology works at both ends of the journey and development costs can be shared.

SITA Lab has already proposed to IATA an industry standard based on common use that would foster interoperability and be cost-effective.

The Lab is working with leading manufacturers of readers Access-IS and Desko, to make their NFC readers compatible with the standard proposed and have them CUTE-certified so that airports can quickly benefit.

IATA has taken the lead by evaluating the facilitation and retail aspects of NFC as part of its Fast Travel initiative. It aims to complete the work in the second half of 2013.

Will we take another step closer to the eventual goal of being able to walk through the airport to the aircraft without breaking stride? We will have to wait and see.

AW

About the author Renaud Irminger is director of SITA Lab, SITA’s strategic technology research team. Visit https://www.sita.aero/surveys-reports/ sita-lab? for more information.

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Web wonders Barry Mansfield reports on the latest in airport web design. How can sites be improved to boost customer communication, the airport experience and operator revenues?

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he operator’s prerogative is to convert web users to hotel bookings, special offers, fast tracking, car hire, foreign exchange information, pre-booking duty free, and obtaining their contact details if they are willing.

Historically, Copenhagen Airport – often cited as a pioneer in terms of the development of its website – has clearly listed all the low price fares available to its destinations, together with links to the airlines offering these fares.

In recent years it has enhanced the site greatly, together with Singapore Changi, Adelaide and Delhi, by pioneering the use of interactive maps showing floor layouts within the terminals.

With a further revamp of the site set to go live at the close of 2013 or the beginning of 2014, Copenhagen’s trendsetting activity is clearly set to continue. However, it is not alone as an ever-increasing number of gateways continue to discover the potential benefits of multi-faceted websites.

Interactive maps Interactivity involves a range of technologies. Since spring 2012, SANmap, the online interactive map of San Diego International Airport – via 360-degree panoramic videos – has allowed passengers to evaluate shopping, dining, parking rates and car rental options before they get to the gateway.

By contrast, Dublin’s interactive map is a simple cartoon-like flash graphic, showing driving directions. Changi’s map gives an indication of average walking times between immigration and the final gate, together with icons for various facilities and services.

They include public telephones, laptop access, free Internet coverage, ATMs, post and money changers, eating areas, the hotel, and a movie theatre, which overseas visitors may be unaware of without help from the website.

Cultural awareness As passenger demographics change, airport operators are discovering that they must adapt their websites. For example, Fraport AG has launched a Chinese version of its Frankfurt Airport website, to add to FRA’s WebApp in Mandarin, and the Mandarin-speaking assistants and service staff in the terminal who are able to give assistance to customers on the shop floor.

The latest version, available at cn.frankurt-airport.com, is not simply a direct translation from the German or English language site, however. It is tailored to the specific needs of Chinese passengers, covering shopping, essential services, popular fashion brands, and instructions on how to obtain value-added tax refunds directly in the terminals.

To find out more about Frankfurt’s campaign to woo Chinese passengers – Germany is the most popular destination in the EU for Chinese travellers and the airport estimates that around one million passengers travelled on routes to and from the PRC last year – see Page 59.

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Similarly, Sydney Airport has moved quickly to develop a new Chinese language section on its desktop and mobile sites to cater for the surging number of Chinese passengers.

Earlier in the year it launched a mobile-friendly version of its airport website to enable travellers to easily access updated information on flights, shopping and parking on their phone.

Around half of the 500,000 visitors to the site each month use mobile devices, according to Sydney Airport’s CEO Kerrie Mather, who describes the mobile-friendly version as a “one-stop shop” for information, ranging from security procedures to accommodation.

The mobile-friendly site complements Sydney Airport’s existing iPhone and Android apps, which have been downloaded by more than 80,000 people.

The apps offer live flight information pushed straight to the passenger’s phone, as well as comprehensive store listings and exclusive retail offers.

Mobile websites This is similar to the approach of Tennessee’s McGhee Tyson Airport, recognised by the Airports Council International-North America (ACI-NA) as provider of the best mobile website in June 2013.

Passengers travelling with an iPhone or iPad are advised to download the McGhee Tyson Airport mobile app, free of charge from the iTunes app store. This customer service app allows passengers to check flight status, arrival and departure times, and airline, parking and terminal information.

Arizona’s Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport won this same award in 2012 for the customer-friendly mobile version of its website, skyharbor.com. In late 2011, airport employees were informing passengers of the new mobile site in-person as they passed through the terminals.

Smartphone and tablet users are automatically directed to the new mobile site when visiting skyharbor.com. There is a ‘Plan Your Visit’ tool, which allows users to customise their search for amenities located near their departure or arrival gates. Customer feedback is also simplified.

Designer experience UK-based outfit KMP Digitata has grown exponentially year on year from the mid-2000s, as airports have turned to the consultancy to modernise their websites.

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

“From 2010 onwards, the key differences have been in the growth of mobile and the need to look at responsive websites,” says KMP’s user interaction designer, Richard Clark.

“Manchester Airport is our legacy system. We have a desktop and mobile version of the site, which are totally separate and different. With the Humberside website we have a fully responsive design that works across any device. It’s purely a legacy thing. As airports catch up, the sector will move more and more to responsive design.”

So what, then, makes for clever responsive design? Gatwick’s new site has an option to search worldwide for hotels and car hire, not just at Gatwick, which surely helps to drive extra revenue from hotel partners.

This tidy site, featuring a clear font and straightforward navigation, has a handy pin button allowing users to save an arrival or departure at the bottom of their window, to select later.

The big picture Despite excellent social integration, KMP’s client services director Rhodri Edwards, who cites New Zealand’s top airport websites as his favourites, admits that visitors will “very rarely keep returning to an airport site, even though the airport’s commercial objective is to make money.”

Clark emphasises that airport websites are an anomaly in that there is typically a conflict between what the customers are looking for, and what the operator wants them to look at.

“With an e-commerce site like Amazon, the visitor is there because they want to buy a specific item, and Amazon is there to sell it to them,”

he says. “But over 80% of visitors go to an airport website to find flight information.”

While Edwards is keen on Humberside’s geo-location functionality, which uses Google maps to give driving directions to the airport, revenue generation would be through “dishing up in-airport promotional messages, such as money-off vouchers, rather than the flight-based offers you would expect to see if you’re located further away from the terminal.”

That’s why Clark believes free Wi-Fi services can enable operators to provide a more personalised offering. “The issue is getting it properly integrated with the website,” he cautions.

“Ideally when you sign up, you’ll see a version of the website that recognises the fact that you’re physically in the airport and configures the site for information that’s relevant to you.

“A lot of the challenges for operators are around building relationships with the different companies, in order to provide that information. The aim is that their catalogue should be transparently available on the website.

Technicalities should be invisible to the end user.”

Clark and Edwards report more interest from African airports since KMP’s recent visit to ACI World’s annual conference and exhibition in Istanbul.

“It’s a bit early in the day for them still, but the airports are getting more advanced, and also the passengers,” says Edwards.

“Expectations are changing. They will be looking for responsive solutions with quick performance. They don’t want downloads. The smartphones we use today will be feature phones in Africa or Asia in the near future, with the web dominating text.”

AW

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Thinking outside the box

Adopting a multi-channel approach to retailing will help concessionaires maximise sales revenues in the years ahead, write Andy Morrey and Sophie Albizua.

T

he realisation that the vast majority of growth forecasts over the next few years will come from the impact of digital change ensures that the multi-channel race is raging in the retail industry.

Indeed, in countries like the United Kingdom, retailers can’t come up with enough ideas to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of their multi-channel-savvy shoppers.

Whilst services like click and collect are now close to ubiquity, more and more retailers are moving into kiosk or iPad-driven in-store ordering, and every day we hear of new ideas to enhance the shopping experience and conversion using mobile technology, augmented reality, or near-field technologies.

The most recent examples include IKEA’s planned launch of an application using augmented reality to show how furniture would look in real-life rooms, or Waitrose’s rumoured exploration of GPS tracking to prepare click and collect orders as customers approach stores.

It is therefore surprising that the only multi-channel ‘innovation’ found in most airside retail areas are large advertising display screens and a shop and collect service to pick up goods bought in store upon return.

What could travel retail learn from the latest thinking in multichannel retailing?

On the high street or downtown mall, multi-channel innovation has been going on for a long time. Click and collect, or the ability to allow customers to order or reserve something online before picking up in store, is now used by 50% of UK shoppers.

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Retailers like Halfords got their click and collect penetration to 86% of online orders within five years of launch, demonstrating strong demand and driving above market growth.

Airport retailers however, have used it sparingly. For example, Boots allows baby products to be picked up airside after reservation on the internet, and Heathrow Airport offers a selection of goods to reserve before a trip. However, none of these has taken off.

One reason for the slow pick-up in airport retailing lies in execution, but almost as important, if not more, is communication.

Due to inherent conflicts of interests between airports, duty free retailers, and airlines, or simply the lack of coherent thinking, none of the few multi-channel initiatives out there are developed and promoted, and therefore, few are known or used by customers.

Looking further afield than click and collect applications, the use of technology to enhance in-store experience is as relevant in airport retailing as it is on the high street.

The momentum that luxury retailers such as Burberry have started as they demonstrate the impact of mobile technology and social media on branding and sales, should serve as a kick start for airport outlets to follow suit.

Examples of the enhanced shopping experience to come include: “Magic mirrors” using RFID technology to give shoppers content and entertainment on the products they are buying; personalised offers pushed to mobile phones depending on location and profile; and the ability for customers to share their purchases

SPECIAL REPORT: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

and experiences through social media, apps or touch screen technology.

However, these would just be replicas of their high street counterparts. Where multi-channel has the biggest potential in an airport environment is in catering for the uniqueness of the shopping experience airside, where customers are ‘trapped’ inside a finite space with an hour to spare and the desire to shop and be entertained. Every retailer’s dream!

Over and above mobile and social technologies discussed so far, the latest craze in multi-channel retailing is in-store ordering, or ISO in multi-channel jargon. Click and collect’s reverse, it represents the ability to order a product from a kiosk or an iPad whilst inside a store, for delivery anytime, anywhere.

Many retailers, like Marks and Spencer or House of Fraser, are in the late stages of trialling or implementation, and early signs show that in-store ordering will become “the next click and collect” in terms of customer adoption.

Assuming the legal hurdles could be overcome, for airport retailers in-store ordering makes sense. Space constraints mean that ranges on display are often limited, and the browsing mentality specific to airside retailing means that customers are much more likely to be receptive to browsing for products on an iPad. Once customers understand that they can access a much wider range of goods at tax-free prices, behaviours may well change.

There is another obvious place for ‘in-store ordering’, which is inside planes themselves. The constraint of restricting the products sold to those that can be stocked on the plane is not an issue in an age where customers are used to shopping in one place and receiving their goods in another.

Most inflight ranges can only be described as underwhelming next to the infinite access to products customers can now find whilst shopping online. Nothing prevents airlines from offering a broader range of non-stocked items that they then send to customers for home delivery.

The other obvious application of that idea is inflight online shopping. The historical issues around the lack of internet connection are being resolved as we speak, but in the meantime, down-to-earth

thinking around buffers for levels of stock and synchronisation of stock levels post flight should do the trick just fine.

Finally, multi-channel should be used for its raison d’être: convenience. The current convenience offering of allowing people to shop airside and collect their goods on their return is a good start, but it should, and will, go further in line with multi-channel innovation.

The success of Tesco’s virtual shopping walls in South Korea’s tubes was replicated with their trial at Gatwick in August 2012, which allowed shoppers to use their mobile phones to scan and buy virtual image fridge staples in time for their return.

Multi-channel innovation will naturally find its way to airport retailing, but it would be a mistake for all players to stop there.

Having shoppers locked in for a significant period of shopping time is every retailer’s dream and is a unique feature of airport retailing which fits multi-channel like a glove.

Conflicts of interest for share of wallet between airlines, airport operators, duty free operators and retailers are not simple.

But neither were conflicts between retailers and brands at the beginning of the online shopping revolution, or conflicts between retailers operating in shopping centres who are now teaming up together to satisfy customers’ insatiable needs for convenience and experience.

Apparent technological, operational, or conflict barriers will, just like in every other aspect of multi-channel retailing, fall with time. Then, the early adopters and ‘outside of the box’ thinkers will reap the rewards of a fascinating and untapped market which is all up for grabs.

AW

About the authors Andy Morrey and Sophie Albizua are the founders of eNova Partnership (eNova), multi-channel practitioners and consultants.

They can be contacted at info@enovapartnership.com or via the website www.enovapartnership.com

AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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E G N A H C X E G N I T E K R A M PORT

MARKETING

AIR THINKING DIFFERENTLY

– WARSAW CHOPIN In the first of a regular series of exchanges, David McMullen catches up with Przemysław Przybylski of Warsaw Chopin Airport (WAW) to exchange ideas and explain why maximising the social media potential of your airport begins with having a clear plan.

M

ost airports now recognise that social media opens a two-way conversation with passengers. But how many airports can claim a competitive advantage over their neighbouring airports in this sphere? Or, for that matter, how many are driving ancillary revenues from customers who are broadcasting their location in the terminal? Which airports are committed to developing engaging strategies that accomplish overall business goals?

The Airport Marketing Exchange column seeks to discover the answers to these questions, along with many more insights through a series of discussions with senior airport executives who are leading the way in this new age of marketing.

Knowing your business goals and your market McMullen: All campaigns – digital, experiential, offline – need to be mapped back to business goals. For WAW, what is your number one marketing goal?

Przybylski: Our chief goal is to increase WAW revenues, with a focus on non-aviation services and the development of marketing activities targeted at services dedicated to the business segment.

McMullen: While WAW is the main gateway to Warsaw, how does the airport continue differentiating its marketing from upcoming low cost competitor, Warsaw-Modlin Airport?

Przybylski: Compared to Modlin Airport, WAW is focused on the business segment and frequent flyers. For example, it has services like VIP Line and Executive Lounges. However, the recent expansion of LCCs in the terminal shows that WAW is also open and attractive to them.

McMullen: Yes, and congratulations on the new, permanent return of Wizz Air.

The marriage between route development and marketing Przybylski: Do you think airports really need to fight for customers?

In most cases, there is only one airport in the city and catchment areas rarely overlap which means this isn’t a competitive market.

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McMullen: Without a doubt! Competition for new air service intensifies each year as more and more airports recognise the significance of their network – not only to the airport, but to the region as well.

Airports are increasingly competing to attract passengers from nearby airports and continue competing for airlines. This often means competing against other European destinations rather than airports within the same catchment.

Hence, in order to become the preferred airport for passengers, airport marketing needs to evolve alongside route development strategy. Yet, in most cases, there tends to be a clear separation between commercial marketing and aviation marketing. Speaking of which, how is marketing structured in WAW? Przybylski: At WAW, airport aviation and non-aviation services – such as marketing – overlap, even though they are separated in the airport operator company structure. This overlap is most visible at the annual Warsaw Chopin Airport gala, which awards best airlines as well as best partners from the non-aviation segment.

Airport marketing – online or offline?

McMullen: In this age of the ‘Connected Traveller’ who is constantly clued into the internet via smart devices, what role do traditional offline marketing efforts still play?

Przybylski: Traditional channels are still important for us. Barter agreements with high-end magazines are particularly useful. These allow WAW to improve passenger experience with more offerings in executive lounges and VIP lounges, and, at the same time, advertise our business services in magazines.

McMullen: At one end, people are saying traditional, offline marketing is dead. At the other end, airports such as Changi are investing in ever more unique experiences, such as an Enchanted Garden. What is your take on this?

Przybylski: At WAW, we look into developing projects that enhance passenger experience. For example, we cooperated with Warsaw Art School in promoting young talent by presenting their artwork to WAW passengers. What do you think are some key advancements in airport marketing?

MARKETING

McMullen: In recent years, digital marketing has had a real impact due to its accountability and the ability to measure campaign performance. This led to a rapid cut in traditional marketing budgets. Airports are beginning to realise that ‘digital’ is not just another channel. It requires a new approach to marketing and a new understanding of customer behaviour.

While we are seeing a revival of traditional methods to support social and online marketing initiatives, we’re also seeing airports investing more in technology and in their social presence. Web analytics software, CRM, content management systems, email platforms and social media monitoring tools are areas of continued investment.

Extending interaction with passengers beyond the physical realm McMullen: We know that your social activity gives you direct contact with your stakeholders – passengers, aviation enthusiasts and local residents. Do you see social media contributing more to business goals such as loyalty and advocacy?

Przybylski: We try not to bombard our fans with promotional adverts since this is frowned upon by the online community, but we do inform our passengers of special offers. We occasionally offer discount vouchers for the airport’s duty-free shops, available only to our Facebook fans.

We want to build a community by involving our fans in a debate about the role of the airport, sharing ideas on how to improve the quality of passenger service and celebrating important events together, rather than through advertising and promotion. This may not be reflected in our sales figures, but to us, social media is a means to build our community and image, not a sales channel. For instance, we have information for plane-spotters on our Facebook page.

McMullen: Social initiatives are greatly enhanced by offering free Wi-Fi and it is now a must-have at airports.

WAW too launched it this March. How has the take-up been?

Przybylski: While free Wi-Fi has been welcomed in general, some passengers – mainly international travellers

– are happy to have free Internet while others complain about the collection of identification data during sign-up, which we must collect according to Polish regulations.

What goes into social media success for WAW? McMullen: WAW is a social media leader in being responsive to passengers. What has been your most important success story?

Przybylski: Social media can be very useful for direct communication with passengers, particularly during crises. The severe winter of 2010 – widespread disruption to air traffic around Europe due to heavy snow – and the wheels-up landing of LOT’s B767 in November 2011, following the failure of its landing gear, are two of many examples.

McMullen: How has your marketing evolved with the advent of social media? Do you have dedicated full-time personnel?

Przybylski: There is no dedicated social media team. One full-time person runs our Facebook page while I run Twitter. Colleagues from the PR department help us if necessary. We don’t offer a 24-hour service, instead we work on a ‘stand-by’ basis, especially in emergencies.

McMullen: What advice would you give to an airport thinking of launching a social media presence?

Przybylski: Start with a strategy. Ask yourself: why do I enter this world, what do I want to achieve and how?

Further, cultivate your community, inspire it and meet its needs. But it’s not easy and success doesn’t come quick.

Work hard and be patient.

AW

About the author David McMullen is SimplFlying’s vice president, airports.

we xecutive, and gX . e rt o p ir a r io n with a se marketin Q&A exchange rsation on T witter #airport a re tu a fe l il w ve The next issuecourage you to join the con en AIRPORT WORLD/OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 2013

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AIRFIELD SAFETY

One vision Airport World rounds-up the latest airfield safety news from across the globe.

Adelaide opens new ATC high-tech tower Australian deputy prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has officially opened Adelaide Airport’s new 44-metre-tall ATC tower, which brings its air traffic control systems into the digital era.

The A$16.9 million ($15.2m) complex replaces a 21-metre-high tower that dated back to 1983. Airport

managing director, Mark Young, says Airservices Australia and the airport had worked together on the project for several years. “Having a modern air traffic control facility matches our commitment to operate Australia’s most modern airport,” he enthuses.

Satellite-based precision approaches at Frankfurt Airport German air navigation service provider, DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung, is pushing forward with the implementation of satellite-based precision landing at Frankfurt Airport.

In May, DFS and the Frankfurt airport operator, Fraport, signed a co-operation agreement for the installation of a Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) for Category I operations.

As a result of the deal, a GBAS station manufactured by Honeywell will be installed at the gateway in 2014, ensuring Frankfurt’s status as the first major international European airport to be equipped with the technology.

Earlier this year, DFS and Indra Navia implemented a GBAS trial station at Frankfurt Airport to test the technology and to support the validation of ICAO standards up to Category III approaches as part of the SESAR project 15.3.6.

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“With GBAS, DFS is advancing a future technology and is an innovation pioneer worldwide. We are making an important contribution to increasing efficiency,” explains chairman and CEO, Klaus-Dieter Scheurle.

“Since we introduced the first CAT-I-certified GBAS station in Germany at Bremen Airport in 2012, this technology has successfully proved its practicability.”

It is envisaged that GBAS technology will eventually replace instrument landing system (ILS) technology.

The costs for the installation and operation of the ground station for CAT I operations at Frankfurt will run to about €5 million.

According to DFS, the biggest advantage of GBAS is the number of different approach procedures – 49 arrivals destined for various runways – that can be simultaneously used with just one station.

AIRFIELD SAFETY

Airfield enhancements

A number of major gateways across Europe and North America used the summer months to start or complete major upgrades to runways, aprons and taxiways.

The €26 million make-over of Heathrow’s southern runway is one step closer after the completion of the replacement of the asphalt surface, and the start of the final installation of the new lights and cabling.

After a decade of continuous pounding by millions of aircraft taking off and landing, the runways at Heathrow are undergoing vital refurbishment to ensure they are safe and in good order.

And as the airport cannot close a runway during the working day, the logistically complex operation happens during the night and on one runway at a time. The work began on the southern runway in April; the northern runway will be resurfaced next year using the same process.

Over 150 construction workers using approximately 80 heavy items of plant and equipment have worked for almost four months to excavate and relay 22,000 tonnes of asphalt – the runway’s hardwearing surface.

With this part of the project completed, the next phase – to complete the installation of around 130,000 metres of lighting cable and over 1,000 Aeronautical Ground Lights (AGLs) – began at the beginning of August. These AGLs help guide the pilots during poor visibility and are fitted within the surface of the Runway.

During each working night more than 1,000 cones mark out a temporary road system along the length of the runway to allow safe passage of vehicles and machinery.

Andrew Mitchell, senior project manager, said: “We’ve successfully laid and grooved the new surface and now we’re cracking on with laying the thousands of metres of new cable and connecting hundreds of lights.”

Airfield safety at Boston Logan has been enhanced with the installation of an arrestor bed on a new 470ft extension to safety area of Runway 33L. The surface of the extension, built on a pier extending out into Boston harbour, is made of crushable concrete, which is designed to halt aircraft that overrun the runway.

US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood described the new crushable concrete area as “an important backstop”.

The engineered material arresting system (EMAS) bed is designed to stop an aircraft as large as a B747 if it moves past the end of the runway.

In the US, EMAS beds are approved by the FAA at airports where water, city streets or other factors limit space for safety areas at the end of a runway. They have successfully stopped eight aircraft from overrunning runways since 1999.

Massport began the $63 million project in 2011, using $50 million in FAA Airport Improvement (AIP) funding and $13 million of its own funds.

As part of the runway work, the FAA worked closely with Massport to speed up the installation of an upgraded instrument landing system to help guide pilots in strong crosswinds and winter operations when snow is on the ground.

The new system also serves as a backup to another Category II/III approach.

In January 2009, an ESCO EMAS arrestor bed stopped a US Airways Bombardier CRJ-200 overrunning the runway at Yeager Airport in Charleston, North Carolina.

Fire power

Oshkosh Airport Products Group will showcase its Oshkosh Striker Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) vehicle at this year’s inter airport Europe trade fair in Munich.

On display at outdoor booth E78, the Oshkosh Striker 6 x 6 is one of five apparatus recently delivered to Birmingham Airport in the UK. “Our Striker 6 x 6 provides a new level of ARFF emergency response capabilities and we’re delighted to feature it at inter airport Europe,” says Jeff Resch, vice president and general manager for Oshkosh Airport Products.

“The Birmingham Striker is notable in that it is among a group of five vehicles representing the first Strikers on duty in Great Britain.”

The Striker on display at inter airport Europe is equipped with a Snozzle high-reach extendable turret that can penetrate an aircraft fuselage in the event of an aircraft incident, allowing direct and close range access to an onboard fire.

Other features include a vehicle data recorder (to catalogue the driver’s actions when responding to an emergency), and a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera.

Tyres and lights

Aéroports de Paris (ADP) reveals that it uses high-pressure cleaners to blast nearly seven tonnes of tyre deposits off the runways at Paris CDG each year.

It says it uses high-pressure cleaners capable of processing 16,000sqm of tarmac a night to remove the rubber twice or three times yearly.

The machines are also used to spray a solution of sodium bicarbonate to clean ‘gum deposits’ from nearly 25,000 runway lights annually.

“The runway lights of Paris-Charles de Gaulle are cleaned with a new projection system of sodium bicarbonate, with spectacular results while meeting environmental standards,” enthuses ADP’s Arnaud Guihard, ADP’s maintenance manager, CDG. “This is the same product used in cooking or by our grandmothers for cleaning the house.”

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AIRFIELD SAFETY

Zurich ready for winter

Several thousand litres a day of Kilfrost’s Type I and IV de/anti-icing fluids will remove snow and ice from the wings and tails of aircraft at Zurich Airport this winter.

The company was selected to provide its fluid due to the effectiveness of the de/anti-icing products, which include the world’s first fluid-based bio-glycol derived from a sustainable source.

The airport itself has a stock capacity of 220,000 litres for each fluid type, while between them, ground handler Swissport and Kilfrost can draw on a stockpile of some 345,000 litres in Birrfeld, a village located 30 minutes from Zurich Airport.

Up to six bulk tankers of fluid daily are delivered to Zurich Airport during the coldest periods, a process that is carefully co-ordinated by an early form of Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) process installed by the Swiss gateway.

Bright sparks

UK-based airfield lighting provider, atg, claims that it has revolutionised the airfield lighting market with the launch of its new IRIS lighting system.

One of the major attractions of IRIS is the environmental benefits it brings to airport operators looking to adhere to green standards set by the ACI’s Airport Carbon Accreditation Programme.

For IRIS is designed to be recycled, LEDs reduce power consumption (resulting in less carbon dioxide emissions) and the fitting uses an internal closed loop control system, which monitors LED parameters, maintaining a consistent light output throughout the life of the fitting.

In addition, potential impact damage to aircraft landing gear is reduced with IRIS because the fitting’s height above the pavement surface is reduced from 12mm to less than 6mm.

Furthermore, IRIS has no negative slope, which means there is nowhere for water retention or dirt to build up in front of the prism. This means that the photometrics are optimised for all operating conditions.

Also, atg claims that a great deal of consideration has gone into the design of IRIS in order to reduce maintenance costs. As a result, the innovative new product is assembled with minimum parts and interchangeable arrays, allowing airfield engineers to save on maintenance time and reduce the amount of spare parts needed.

It can also fit into existing airfield architecture, allowing a quick changeover from old tungsten halogen to the new cutting edge IRIS LED lights.

Kevin Armstrong, atg’s sales director, says: “Our objective was to create a brand new LED fitting that would be world class in terms of performance, ultra reliable and easy to maintain.

“At a time when airports everywhere are making an effort to reduce their carbon emissions and airfield maintenance costs, IRIS will help them achieve this.”

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New multilateration system for Lisbon

Saab has successfully completed the expansion of its surface multilateration system at Lisbon International Airport into a Wide Area Multilateration (WAM) deployment for Terminal Manoeuvring Area surveillance.

NAV Portugal will use the WAM surveillance data to complement existing radar coverage of flights in the Lisbon Vectoring Area, with enhanced coverage of low flying aircraft.

Previously, Saab’s surface multilateration system for Lisbon’s Advanced – Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS) was deployed on-time and accepted into operation.

The WAM system, comprised of existing A-SMGCS sensors and additional sensors in a wide area formation, provides tracking of Mode S, Automatic Dependent Surveillance, Broadcast (ADS-B) and Mode A/C targets.

“By expanding the existing Saab multi-lateration system with additional sensors for terminal area surveillance, we increased our situational awareness of flights, and added another back-up to the terminal area radar,” said Carlos Alves, head of engineering department, NAV Portugal. “This further enhances the safety of flights today and provides us with a system that is fully ready for tomorrow’s use of ADS-B.” The system used uses multiple low-maintenance, non-rotating sensors to triangulate aircraft location based on transponder signals, which in turn provide air traffic controllers with precise aircraft position and identification information regardless of weather conditions.

AW

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Don’t worry, be happy!

Stuart Bowden discovers more about Frankfurt Airport’s innovative ‘Great to Have You Here’ customer service programme.

W

hen an airport calls passengers its ‘guests’ and boldly states that its aim is to make your trip “a wonderful experience”, you can tell that it takes customer service very seriously.

Indeed, the message on Frankfurt’s website is clear, the airport revealing: “Our goal is for every one of our guests to feel well taken care of. Often, little things can make the difference. A smile, good signage or a helping hand can turn time spent at Germany’s largest airport into a fondly remembered experience.”

Talk is cheap, of course, but in Frankfurt’s case, operator Fraport genuinely appears committed to improving customer satisfaction levels through doing a better job at delivering its existing services, and introducing a host of pioneering new ones to impress passengers.

Annegret Reinhardt-Lehmann, Fraport’s now former senior vice-president for customer relations (she retired from the role at the end of August), has always believed that people make a good airport special, and this mentality has clearly been passed down to her customer relations team and other frontline staff at Frankfurt in recent times.

This new way of looking at things has even led to the management of Frankfurt Airport (FRA) claiming that the quality of the overall airport experience is crucial to the gateway, both in bringing back repeat custom and in creating a positive ‘word of mouth’ network of recommendations.

“Our philosophy has basically been to bring back the joy of flying,” says Annegret Reinhardt-Lehmann. “The main thrust is that airlines and airports are increasingly exposed to competition, and we are aiming to counter this with our programme.”

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For her part, Reinhardt-Lehmann has spent the best part of the past three years devising and implementing a comprehensive review and revamp of the airport’s whole approach to customer service.

“Nowadays, passengers often consider airports to be a hassle. All the aggravations of queues at check-in and security procedures and so forth, tended to create negative reactions among what are, after all, our guests. We wanted to change that.”

She adds that in the 1950s and 1960s, flying used to be a positive and enthusing aspect of the overall travel experience.

“So, we decided we’d try and make the whole airport experience more ‘joyful’ again, from the moment the passenger arrives at the car park or the railway station right through to the moment they actually board their aircraft,” explains Reinhardt-Lehmann.

Market research shows, she says, that waiting in line is the biggest bugbear for the passenger. “We decided that no passenger should be asked to wait for more than 10 minutes in any queue. So we did several things to try and ensure this. We laid down criteria, re-structured our security lines, and negotiated with our airlines to ensure that check-in staff are at their desks earlier than ever before.

“We looked at all the other main areas of the process – immigration, customs, emigration and so on, as well, in a bid to make all key procedures quicker, easier and less stressful.”

For example, she adds, regarding the security checking process, if staff feel the lines are getting too long, they will act quickly to re-route passengers through additional gates.

And it’s not just the queuing that Frankfurt has addressed. Indeed, Reinhardt-Lehmann’s department has tackled virtually every aspect of the

CUSTOMER SERVICE

customer interface in what is a huge operation, employing a total of 17,000 staff, and handling upwards of 480,000 aircraft movements and 57 million passengers yearly.

“We have created a ‘service university’ on the airport site, and 5,000 staff have already graduated,” smiles Reinhardt-Lehmann. “It’s vital that everyone works towards this new culture of customer focus.”

While the personal touch on the ground is a fundamental part of FRA’s new approach, everything is backed up in the form of information available to the passenger. From on-site airport signage to downloadable guide brochures, it’s all there.

“Language has become even more important to us as we aim to help our passengers find their way through the terminals. We have three guide brochures available for advance download from our website, in nine languages, as an example,” she notes.

Passengers intending to travel to, from or through FRA can currently do their online homework about the airport in German, English, French, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, with guides available, including a general airport facilities brochure, a transfer guide, and a shopping and dining summary.

For those using German, English and Mandarin Chinese, there are even mobile phone apps, available from Apple or Google.

In a further attempt to attract the Chinese traveller (around a million of whom pass through FRA each year), and no doubt also to help maximise retail sales, the gateway even supplies Mandarin-speaking ‘personal shopping assistants’, whose services can be requested at the information desk, and who will assist with the passengers’ shopping, reclaiming of VAT and other details.

The scheme was recently extended to include traditionally big-spending Russian travellers, which Fraport knows are particularly interested in perfumes, French red wine, and various international brand-name products.

Arriving at the airport, passengers are informed by multi-lingual staff at information desks, not to mention the fact that prior to travelling, they can avail themselves of 24-hour telephone help in as many as 18 languages.

Terminal announcements are made in 15 languages as relevant to the flights concerned, and for arriving passengers there is a new Welcome Centre aiming to assist with any queries.

Comprehensive signage throughout the airport complex details walking times to all points, providing enough information that the passenger feels he or she is in control, says Reinhardt-Lehmann.

“Making sure the passenger is fully informed about how much time he or she has is very important to this sense of control,” admits ReinhardtLehmann. “Little things like knowing whether there is time for a coffee, for example, make all the difference.”

Frankfurt has also innovated in some ‘unique’ ways, she claims. “These include our ‘happy moments’. As an example on July 4, we greeted arriving American passengers with bags of jellybeans to help them feel at home on their Independence Day. We also issue free bottles of drinking water for passengers waiting at the baggage carousels. Things like this create a pleasant surprise for the travel-weary.”

And little touches like this are not expensive to provide, an easy and economical way to put a smile on the face of the frazzled and jet-lagged traveller.

Of course, careful planning of the physical improvements to an airport’s terminals plays a large part in the overall passenger impression as well.

Frankfurt, like many other major airports, is investing heavily in expansions and enhancements to its facilities.

Recent additions include provision of 250 new parking spaces exclusively for the use of women, along with several ‘quiet’ areas where passengers can relax in relative peace while waiting to board their flights.

Nine new children’s play areas are being opened in Terminals 1 and 2 in the coming year, to keep the little ones content, and a number of prayer rooms for several faiths are now available.

Although not the only airport to do so, Frankfurt is even offering a weddings service through which the happy couple can actually get hitched on-site before jetting off on their honeymoon.

“Frankfurt Airport has changed a lot in the last few years and I am very proud of what we’ve achieved from both a customer service and infrastructure development perspective. The new Frankfurt Airport is exciting and enriching.

AW Come see for yourself,” Reinhardt-Lehmann concludes.

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57

RETAIL

Lands of opportunity Duty free expert Paul Topping provides some insight into the challenges and opportunities of launching retail operations in emerging markets.

H

aving worked in the UK, India, Sri Lanka and Turkey and helped establish retail operations in the US, Hong Kong and many other countries, I believe I have developed a good knowledge of doing business in emerging, developing and established markets.

All offer their own particular set of risks and opportunities, none more so than the emerging markets where the risks and challenges faced by new travel retail entrants are often quite different from a legal, cultural and business process perspective.

I suppose the first challenge is to define what is an emerging or developing market. As we know, the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are the five major emerging national economies, and I have had the opportunity of spending quality time in two of them – South Africa and India.

It is clear that these countries are more developing markets with an element of ‘emerging’ or ‘storming’ in relation to aviation. Both have some fantastic airport facilities but are already struggling to cope with rising demand. As a result, corrective planning and privatisation are looming opportunities.

Various organisations have given a definition of an emerging market including the IMF, World Bank and Forbes. The definition I like most is from Vladimir Kvint, an economist, who states that: “an emerging market country is a society transitioning from dictatorship to a free market-oriented economy with an increasing economic freedom, expanding middle classes, improving standards of living, social stability and tolerance.”

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So where do I start, given I’m struggling to find uniformity in my experiences to date country by country? There is generally an over optimistic approach when entering any new market and, let’s face it, optimism has to be a core competency of any development team!

The big essentials are to listen, explore, gather information, absorb, cross check and understand what drives the market place. However, balanced with an element of legal/judiciary, culture, history, social structure and other influences, you never generally get to cross all the T’s and dot the I’s before entering the market and doing business.

The exploration of new markets may, for some, be a checklist approach, a science or just a bloodhound instinct, but for those who participate there should be a passion, a challenge and road of exploration. Shortfalls in due diligence have a nasty habit of cropping up to bite you later.

The connectivity with new, different, exciting people – from entrepreneurs, corporates to government lackeys – adds spice to the whole process.

There is also the required process of lobbying, big in the USA and some other countries, whilst in others there is no structure in place to do this. Those who are involved in the lobbying activity, which in some cases is done via a third party, can end up facing the corruption that exists in many emerging markets. The manoeuvring around and avoiding the corruption can create the need to walk away.

Establishing the level of risk can vary widely from company to company depending on corporate requirements, vision, and rate of return on investment targets.

RETAIL

In some cases, risk balance may be influenced by many other factors, such as a major need to enter a new market; strategic partnership; and competition blocking. In privately owned companies, the pressures and decision-making approach can be different.

The negotiations after tendering or during the acquisition period of a company can be fraught with obstacles and frustrations as well as dealing with a culture you perhaps don’t understand.

In parts of Asia, ‘losing face’ is a sensitive issue, so what you may say amongst group of directors may offend the host and in some cultures a hand shake is like a signed contract, hence due diligence should include the business culture check.

Having done all that, your hit rate of starting discussions to landing, signing and running the business may be as low as 10%.

You need to know “when to hold them, when to fold them and when to walk away”.

Through the process there is always a need to keep assessing where you are in relation to company needs, mission and the comfort zone of the board/owners.

It is likely and predictable that part of the failure rate is down to a change of heart by the board of directors of one or more parties involved.

Some classic pitfalls/typical scenarios faced in developing businesses in emerging markets can include: • The opening of the airport is being delayed, yet you have a contract • Government approval is slow to secure or is being blocked by your competitor • The government changes the status of the contract – no tobacco duty free sales on arrival, for example • Your potential partner changes their level of commitment at the last moment

• • • • •

•

A tender turns into an auction Passenger traffic forecasts are not reached, airlines fold, etc Country elections take place and aviation policies and contracts due to be signed come under critical review You thought you had ‘exclusivity’ and there is a change, and you have a potential competitor to deal with You sign up with an airport, but local government departments such as Immigration and Security are not in line with the plans and block progress You buy the business, your due diligence is insufficient and you have to implement plan ‘B’

Establishing a business in an emerging market can often seem like a journey of a thousand miles, but all great experiences begin with a single step, and for those that get things right, the rewards can be lucrative.

Today, I’m part of the Flemingo team. We have 16 people scouting and working on business development. This excludes and is prior to involving lawyers, operations teams, buying departments, etc.

We are focused on emerging markets and our success in Africa, India, Poland and a few other locations has led to a 60% growth in annual sales for the last six years, so we must be doing something right.

AW

About the author Paul Topping is an independent board director with Dubai-based global travel retail operator, Flemingo International. http://www.flemingo-intl.com/

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59

HEALTH & WELLBEING

Headline Standfirst goes here

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Rest assured From enchanted gardens to yoga rooms and health stations, Sarah McCay takes a look at the latest health and wellbeing initiatives being introduced at airports around the world.

O

nce upon a time, waiting in an airport departure lounge meant hours of sitting in uncomfortable seats, drinking bitter coffee and staring at screen. Monotony – airports seemed to have the monopoly on it.

Following the trends of the hospitality industry to wow and pamper, the airport departure lounge is now often as enticing and exciting as the end destination. What’s more, luxury facilities as spa treatments and shower rooms are no longer the exclusive benefits of those travelling at the front of the plane.

Tropical paradise Singapore’s Changi Airport launched its latest themed garden this year, offering a dramatic display of vibrant colours and interactive technology.

Changi has spearheaded airport gardens, its first opening in 1981. This year, the airport has opened its fifth themed garden. Located in Terminal 2’s departure transit mall, the new ‘Enchanted Garden’ offers undulating pathways, a fishpond, flowers and ferns, and an interactive system using motion sensors to trigger sounds of nature. The garden is open and free of charge to passengers 24-hours a day.

Amsterdam Schiphol offers an indoor/outdoor Airport Park located in the centre of the airport and featuring a 130-year-old tree as its centrepiece.

The park offers picnic tables, a café and sun terrace, while images of butterflies are projected onto the walls.

Dubai International Airport’s Terminal 3 offers a Zen Garden with palm and pine trees and ferns. The area is even fitted with refreshing mist machines.

Spa break Today’s weary travellers can rejuvenate themselves mid-journey with a massage, facial, pedicure or oxygen treatment.

At London Heathrow, British Airways has teamed up with skincare brand Elemis to offer customers Elemis Travel Spas in the southern Galleries lounges, the Galleries arrivals lounge and the Galleries club lounge.

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These spas are open to first class and Club World customers or Gold Executive Club members travelling on long-haul flights, and all treatments are offered on a complimentary basis.

The spas offer a range of 15-minute treatments, from facials to shoulder massages and hot stone massages for the feet.

For a real breath of fresh air, OraOxygen offers a spa with a twist at Calgary International Airport. Designed to combat the tiredness that comes from breathing in pressurised, recycled cabin air, the spa offers boosts of oxygen alongside its menu of facials, massages and other beauty treatments.

In the US, XpresSpa has made the airport spa its speciality. The company opened its first spa at New York’s John F Kennedy Airport in 2003, and now operates in 22 airports. The outlets offer massage, nail care, skin care, or waxing treatments.

For a quick freshen up, San Francisco International Airport offers a Freshen Up! store providing shower facilities and toiletries for $15 a go.

Layover For most international travellers, the ultimate luxury is sleep. Airport sleep pods are growing in popularity following the roll-out of Yotel at London Gatwick and London Heathrow in 2007. Yotel now also operates at Amsterdam Schiphol.

Inspired by first-class airline cabins, Yotel offers an affordable accommodation option offering bed and shower in four-hour intervals.

The cabins are equipped with rain showers, desks, Wi-Fi and flatscreen televisions. Prices start from €28.

Other airports are replicating the Yotel model. Dubai’s Terminal 1 offers SnoozeCubes, with full-size bed, touch-screen TV, Wi-Fi and flight updates.

Meanwhile, neighbouring Abu Dhabi International has just launched its GoSleep pod, available from €9.2 per hour. Located in Terminal 3 and the Al Dhabi Lounge in Terminal 1, the pods are effectively chairs that convert into flat beds.

HEALTH & WELLBEING

Airport operator, Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC), initially installed 10 pods, and plans to introduce 35 more before the end of the year.

ADAC’s chief commercial officer, Mohammed Al Bulooki, enthuses: “We continually strive to enhance the experience of passengers travelling to, from or via Abu Dhabi International Airport, and view the introduction of ‘GoSleep’ sleeping pods as another step towards exceeding customer expectations and delivering world-class levels of service.

“Abu Dhabi Airports Company is proud that it is the first airport in the world to have secured an agreement to install the very latest passenger experience that embraces the latest technology.”

The stylish, Finnish-designed sleeping pods are easy to operate and feature a partial or fully enclosed sliding shade that isolates the customer from noise, light and crowds.

After an initial launch phase, the chairs will be upgraded to include Internet access, will include secure storage for luggage and other valuables, and will allow customers to charge their laptops, mobile telephones, and other electronic devices.

Fit to fly For those travellers who feel more invigorated through exercise, many airports are now offering the option to take in a round of golf or a gym session while in transit.

Seoul’s Incheon International Airport offers a ‘Golf Town’ with a 330-yard driving range, 18-hole putting course and swing analysis centre.

At Hong Kong, passengers can tee-off on the Nine Eagles golf course.

Offering a challenging nine holes, the course includes an island in the middle of a man-made lake and some pretty tough bunkers to navigate around. Floodlit, the course is open around the clock, as is the clubhouse.

The Airport Fitness & Wellness Club at Zurich Airport is located at the Radisson Blu hotel, connected to the airport by covered walkway. The facility offers a gym, group classes, personal trainers, Turkish baths and a sleeping room with waterbeds.

For those travellers truly looking to find their inner Zen, San Francisco’s Terminal 2 opened the world’s first airport yoga room in January 2012. The room is open to any ticketed passenger.

Health stations Something a little different is provided by World Health Networks, which, working in partnership with the World Heart Federation, is installing ‘Health Stations’ at airports across the globe to help monitor people’s health.

The unmanned, free-to-use, medical grade Health Stations measure blood pressure, weight, body mass index (BMI), body fat content, and heart rate allowing for early detection of a number of risk factors related to heart disease and stroke.

“The core objective of our partnership is to tackle heart disease through easy access, early detection education and empowerment of individuals,” says Lon von Hurwitz, CEO of World Health Networks.

“We provide this service free of charge to both airports and passengers through associated sponsorships. Airports will therefore be able to offer their customers with potential life-saving facilities.”

Amsterdam and Incheon are among the airports to install its Health Stations to date.

Lounging around For those wanting the first-class lounge experience without the first-class ticket price, Plaza Premium offers a network of lounges at 25 international airports, including Hong Kong, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Riyadh and Toronto.

The Plaza Premium lounges offer varying services, including nap areas, spa facilities, shower rooms and refreshments.

Similarly, Priority Pass is a membership organisation that allows members access to airport VIP lounges whenever they travel.

Members pay an annual fee to be entitled to enter lounges around the world.

Operating since 1992, the system now offers access to more than 600 lounges.

Food And it’s not just the extra little services and facilities that are good for you these days at airports, as apparently the food is getting healthier, too!

This is certainly true for young travellers at Chicago Midway’s restaurants, courtesy of the Healthy Fare for Kids initiative in conjunction with F&B concessionaire, Premier Restaurant Group.

The initiative is designed to bring healthier meal options for the more than nine million children that pass through Chicago Midway International Airport each year.

“An airport is a great place to reach children where there are few options for healthy food,” says Diane Schmidt, president and founder of Healthy Fare for Kids, a local parent and health educator, who started the initiative with chef, Sarah Stegner, and holistic nutritional consultant, Carol Wagoner.

Two-time James Beard award winner Stegner is co-owner and co-chef of the Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook, Illinois.

“We ask chefs to use antibiotic-free meat and poultry, whole grains, local produce, and to prepare foods that are lower in fat and sugar,” said Stegner.

AW “And above all, we ask for a smaller portion size for the kids.”

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63

SECURITY

First line of defence

John Romanowich discusses best practices for airport perimeter security.

R

ecent high-profile intrusions at airports around the world highlight the critical need for accurate, dependable security systems to protect aviation assets.

As a result, there is a growing trend of paying more attention to perimeter security now that most issues around security checkpoints and screening passengers in terminals have been resolved.

Most security professionals, of course, know that perimeter security systems are the first line of defence for airports, so the increased attention on the perimeter is a welcome trend.

Achieving security awareness for airport perimeters comes down to timely, credible alerts with detail to respond.

Knowing the nature and location of an intrusion is the key to mounting an effective response. A number of automated detection technologies including coax and fibre fence sensors, microwave, seismic sensors and radar can provide some level of perimeter detection.

However, thermal cameras with video analytics provide substantial advantages over these alternatives, increasing the probability of intruder detection while greatly reducing the nuisance alarms that have plagued automated perimeter systems in the past.

One advantage is speed, which is paramount when thwarting an intruder. Only such ‘smart’ thermal cameras with video analytics combine accurate detection with visual detail to determine the ‘what and where’ of an alert without additional verification systems.

Knowing the size, location and nature of an event as it unfolds is the key to mobilising an effective response.

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With the innovation of smart thermal cameras with substantially more onboard image processing, thermal systems are now available to accurately detect the presence of unauthorised persons over site perimeters and outdoor areas, regardless of difficult conditions common to an airport.

Smart thermal cameras are designed to filter the effects of environmental elements and provide detection over large areas, regardless of wind, weather or the movement of small objects.

When security operations receive accurate information they can mount an appropriate response to the nature of the alert. Such a system yields the necessary ‘security awareness’ around the perimeter to meet airport security objectives.

When selecting a perimeter solution to protect airports, consider these best practices:

Choose thermal cameras for outdoor perimeters Lighting is often poor or unavailable along extensive airport perimeters. Thermal cameras will ignore stray headlights and reflected light, while operating in total darkness and bright sun.

They also eliminate the expense, power and difficulty of lighting large airport perimeters.

Developments in image processing related to thermal imaging boost the applicability of these systems from their traditional role as ‘night vision’ cameras.

Additional image processing works with thermal image sensors to adapt to dynamic outdoor conditions, such as those of airport

SECURITY

Analyse that The truth today is that, despite a massive amount of CCTV footage being recorded, the vast majority of it is never watched or reviewed due to lack of time. This means that events and activities are missed, and suspicious behaviour is not noticed in time to prevent incidents, writes David Thomasson.

The situation has led to the development of video analytics or intelligent video, where the surveillance system automatically performs an analysis of the captured video images. This is adding real value to surveillance installations.

Network video (IP) cameras now include a range of analytics, such as motion detection, cross-line detection, people counting and anti-tampering detection, together with two-way audio capability.

By processing the video in the network cameras themselves – ‘at the edge’ – the load on the network is significantly reduced as only relevant video is streamed from the cameras.

Intelligent video applications, therefore, help build video surveillance systems that are more cost-effective.

• David Thomasson is Axis Communication’s Northern Europe transportation business development manager.

enter a camera’s housing, impacting the electronics and clouding the camera lens.

Sealed, nitrogen-purged cameras tested to meet NEMA 4X standards will withstand the outdoor environment best, even in harsh environments.

Determine an analytics camera’s detection range when choosing camera placement When designing a perimeter security system, it’s important to know the system’s reliable coverage area. The best measure is the distance at which a camera can detect an intruder walking ‘inbound’ or directly toward the camera, and not the less accurate ‘crossfield’ distance.

In fact, crossfield detection is often twice the distance of inbound detection ranges. Sometimes vendors only publish crossfield detection resulting in designs that leave large security gaps.

Ask your manufacturer to demonstrate their inbound detection range to avoid gaps.

Use overlapping camera views to avoid blind spots All cameras have a blind spot under the pole. This area must be viewed by an adjacent camera to ensure no gaps in security.

Choose a validated, proven solution perimeters, and provide good clear images that are closer in quality to black-and-white photographs.

Image processing intelligently exaggerates small differences in temperatures detected by thermal sensors to make important scene details visible to the human eye.

The availability of better thermal images can eliminate the need for visible cameras during daylight and provide clearer images regardless of conditions 24 hours a day, and the prices have come down significantly making them affordable for mainstream use.

A recent United States Transportation Security Administration (TSA) test at Buffalo Airport in the USA confirmed the detection accuracy of a thermal system in the challenging environment typical of many airports.

According to the TSA’s final report, the “evaluation team performed over 900 scenarios in which every alarm instance was accurately reported.”

The test showed that it is possible to ensure accuracy, even in an uncontrolled environment with constant changes in lighting, wind, clouds and other variables, and to provide effective outdoor security that isn’t plagued by nuisance alarms and false alarms.

Use GPS analytics to increase detection accuracy

Longer-range cameras reduce costs

Perimeter systems must ignore stray movement caused by foliage, blowing debris or small animals while still detecting human and vehicle intrusions at all times.

Cameras with GPS-based analytics know the location and actual size of all objects in the field of view. This is the basis for size filters that accurately detect what’s relevant and ignore objects that don’t meet size criteria, greatly reducing nuisance alerts that can plague other solutions.

Airport perimeters often comprise large areas that can stretch several miles. A majority of a perimeter security solution’s costs relate to supporting infrastructure: poles, cabling, connectivity and power.

Longer-range cameras cover more area with fewer devices, up to twice the detection distance and four times the detection area than previous solutions. Longer ranges reduce the number of poles, trenching and communications needed for an airport’s deployment, lowering costs.

In fact, thermal cameras with video analytics are now much more cost-competitive with other technologies, meeting and even beating traditional solutions for securing perimeters.

Successful security for airports comes down to detection accuracy and economics. New smart thermal camera systems deliver on both, even in the uncontrolled environment of airport perimeters, becoming the new standard for securing aviation assets.

AW

Electronic stabilisation reduces nuisance alarms Smart cameras operate by sensing movement, but outdoors, everything moves. Cameras mounted on a pole will sway from wind, vibrations, aircraft taking off or other factors.

In all cases, choose cameras with built-in electronic stabilisation to maintain a high probability of detection without nuisance alerts from these vibrations.

Choose a camera built to withstand the elements

About the author

To ensure dependability and continuous coverage, outdoor cameras need to be protected from humidity, sand and extreme temperatures. Otherwise, normal expansion and contraction due to thermal changes throughout the day could allow grit, dust or humidity to

John Romanowich is president and CEO of SightLogix. He is also chairman of the Security Industry Association’s Perimeter Security Standards Subcommittee and a member of the RTCA Airport Perimeter Intrusion Detection Standards Group.

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The catalyst for the formation of PReP was the deadly Haiti earthquakes of 2010.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

Relief effort Dr Teo Babun and James Smith provide a special report on the success of an initiative designed to make airports in the Latin America & Caribbean region more resilient to extreme weather and natural disasters.

W

e have all witnessed the central role airports can play in a country, city or region’s relief efforts after a natural disaster, accommodating the arrival of vital supplies, equipment and rescue workers, and allowing the sick and injured to be flown to safety.

Perhaps the most high-profile recent examples of this include the role Christchurch International Airport played after the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake, and Louis Armstrong New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

When the disaster happens in a country with less developed infrastructure, or in an region more susceptible to natural disasters, such as Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the role of the airport can become even more important.

This reality led a coalition of concerned organisations – led by FedEx, Miami International Airport (MIA) and American Airlines – to form a public-private partnership to apply lessons from the past to strengthen airports in the LAC Region for the future.

The initiative, developed by AmericasRelief Team (ART), is the Port Resiliency Program or PReP, which it successfully tested for the first time at Las Americas International Airport in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic earlier this year. It can also can be applied to seaports.

Why Latin America and the Caribbean?

As previously mentioned, strong, resilient airports are at the heart of effective response and recovery following a hurricane or other natural disaster.

The tragic aftermath of Hurricane Georges demonstrated just what happens when ports fail. In 1998, Georges swept across the

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Caribbean as a Category 4 hurricane, devastating Antigua and Barbuda, St Kitts and Nevis, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, and the United States, causing 604 deaths and nearly $6 billion in property damage.

Damaged ports greatly complicated the distribution of relief supplies and personnel, slowing the pace of life-saving humanitarian aid. Incapacitated or poorly-functioning ports further delayed the recovery of fragile island economies, creating a ripple effect that deepened the distress of stricken communities.

Since Georges, the lessons of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as of the Haiti earthquake of 2010, have illustrated the full range of negative impacts that damaged ports have on relief efforts.

Compromised airports and seaports seriously disable the local community – indeed the whole country or region – as the very crisis that injures the port impedes recovery.

Critical medical and other evacuations are delayed. Delivery of badly-needed food and supplies is stalled. Trade slows or stops, businesses fail, jobs are lost, and revenue from duties, taxes, and tariffs declines.

The catalyst for the establishment of PReP was the lessons learned from past disasters, most notably the deadly Haiti earthquakes of 2010 and subsequent relief efforts to Port-au-Prince, in which all the founding organisations were involved.

Its sole aim is to work with Caribbean and Latin American airports and seaports to strengthen their ability to respond to – and recover quickly from – a crisis.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

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What does it do?

PReP facilitates significant, cost-effective improvements by focusing on fortifying current capabilities and building on existing knowledge and relationships.

The programme assists ports in strengthening disaster plans, programmes and procedures through self-assessment, peer assessment, gap analysis, targeted training, customised exercises, and aftercare.

These activities have been organised into four phases.

During October 2012 through February 2013, led by AmericasRelief Team and funded by FedEx, PReP completed a highly successful proof-of-concept pilot test with Las Americas International Airport in Santo Domingo.

In Miami in December 2012, leaders from the airport’s stakeholders and the PReP team met in Miami to review the results of the evaluation of the airport’s emergency plans and equipment, identify gaps, and plan highly specific targeted training to address the gaps.

Thirty persons from 15 different organisations actively participated in the workshop and many of them returned in February 2013, when AERODOM hosted the PReP team who conducted the on-site portion of the pilot project.

Dominican’s Instituto Dominicano de Aviacion Civil (IDAC); Airport Security Corps and Civil Aviation (CESAC); Centro de Operaciones de Emergencias (COE); Policia Nacional; Departmento Aeroportuario; and Auxiliares Navales Domincanos were all actively involved in the pilot project, which American Airlines spearheaded, along with Delta Airlines and Menzies Aviation.

Representatives from the US Consular Service, US Embassy, USAID, and FedEx served as observers for the table top exercise in Santo Domingo managed by Florida International University. The exercise scenario was an earthquake and tsunami at 3am.

PReP, which is based in Miami, a city with strong ties to the Caribbean and Latin American region, works closely with airports and seaports to guide them from where they are to where they want to be in terms of preparedness.

Site visits foster support for employees and their families as well as interagency co-operation, rapid damage assessment and mutual aid.

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In addition, PReP will fly in participants to attend workshops that incorporate best practices and continuous improvement to ensure optimal interoperability among personnel and agencies facing the complex challenges inherent in restoring ports after a crisis.

PReP also focuses on planning and other efforts to avoid conflict between the demands on an airport of disaster relief and recovery activities and the need to restore normal commercial operations as quickly as possible.

The pilot project resulted in significant changes to improve PReP. Most notably, the participants called for PReP to require the airport being served to develop an action plan based on the lessons learned during the training and exercise.

In addition, the participants urged PReP to become the foundation for airport-to-airport mutual aid in the LAC Region, something similar to the Southeast Airport Disaster Operations Group (SEADOG) and Western Airports Disaster Operations Group (WESTDOG), the two main airport-to-airport disaster operations groups in the US. At present, PReP has the capacity to serve one airport every two months, depending on funding.

The AmericasRelief Team is now in the process of converting PReP into an aviation industry (and maritime industry) initiative. Airports throughout the LAC Region, North America, and elsewhere in the world are invited to participate as sponsors, sources of skilled instructors, peer reviewers of emergency plans and equipment needs, and mentors.

It was highly encouraging that nearly everyone who participated in the Las Americas pilot test volunteered to mentor future airports that use PReP. Strong, resilient airports protect vital assets and interests, and they help communities bounce back from disasters. But most of all, strong ports save lives.

AW

About the author Dr Teo Babun is the executive director of AmericasRelief Team, a non-profit, non-governmental organisation based in Miami.

Dr James Smith is the technical director of PReP.

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PROJECT WATCH

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport New greenfield terminal to make Nairobi a continental hub by 2017.

project details Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Important developments: Construction of a new Kenya Airways hub terminal

Scheduled completion date:

I

n 2008, the Kenya Airport Authority (KAA) contracted Louis Berger to prepare a National Airports System Plan (NASP) outlining the capacity needs for 13 airports, including Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA).

Working in association with Runji & Partners Ltd, the global infrastructure and development firm authored an NASP-approved concept for the new greenfield terminal that would make Nairobi a continental hub with adequate capacity.

After a competitive bid, the Louis Berger/ Runji Team was also selected to provide construction consultancy services.

“Jomo Kenyatta’s existing, circular terminal layout has limited growth and revenue,” admits Jorge Novo, principal airport architect and senior planner for Louis Berger’s global aviation division.

“The proposed terminal configuration of an elongated ‘X’ will better accommodate the recent Kenya Airways fleet expansion and respond better to passenger forecasts.”

The site for the new terminal was identified to the east of the existing Jomo Kenyatta terminal, with the existing runway to its immediate north.

In this first phase of development, which is scheduled for completion in 2017, the two north figures of the ‘X’ will be constructed.

Additionally, a second runway is already under design as part of the airport’s overall expansion plan, which will more than double the airport’s capacity to 20 million passengers per annum.

KAA selected the consortium formed by the (joint venture) companies Anhui Construction Engineering Group and China

2017 National Aero-Technology Import & Export Corporation (CATIC), from the People’s Republic of China as the design build contractor for the greenfield terminal.

The Anhui/CATIC Consortium appointed UK architects, Pascall + Watson, as primary designers of the terminal facilities.

While the new terminal seeks to ensure a holistic experience for passengers, it is also designed as an iconic statement for Kenya, reflecting the needs of a modern Nairobi.

The overall design draws from a combination of strong, simple forms, natural materials and careful control of natural light and colour in response to the country’s climate. Gentle curves, overlapping roof planes and radial patterns of the structural columns and façade dominate the proposed facility.

The airport will also be equipped with the latest and greatest in airport systems technology.

The new four-floor, 178,000sqm facility will include 32 contact and 16 remote gates in addition to 50 international and 10 domestic check-in positions.

The main terminal building is arranged over five floors: baggage systems will be located on the ground floor, immigration and arrivals corridors on the first floor, and the second floor will contain the departures concourse, check in and emigration. A hotel and CIP Lounge is planned for the third and fourth floors.

By 2018, the new terminal’s opening year, JKIA will provide capacity needs of growing air traffic, serve as an important East African hub, enhance revenue stream for KAA, and provide an increased level of efficiency and passenger comforts.

AW

Principal companies involved: The Louis Berger Group, Runji & Partners Ltd, Anhui/ CATIC Consortium, Pascall + Watson Architects, Ltd

Total investment: $654 million

The aftermath of the fire In the early morning hours of August 7, a fire broke out in the arrivals terminal, suspending operations and destroying the building. For four hours the fire burned through Terminal 3 and parts of Terminal 2 before firefighters were able to contain the blaze.

Luckily, there were no casualties reported and normal operations resumed at the airport two days later.

Currently, international arrivals are handled in tents located on the airport’s aprons and in the existing domestic terminal, with plans to shift operations into a new parking garage by the end of September.

By the end of January, KAA intends to house the international arrivals in the newly completed Terminal 4, which is expected to accommodate 2.5 million passengers annually.

Prior to the fire, construction of Terminal 4 was already under way as a short-term solution to alleviate JKIA’s already limited capabilities.

The building will operate for at least three years, according to KAA authorities, and will provide much-needed space as work on the greenfield terminal progresses.

As JKIA continues to deal with the transition, the existing Presidential Pavilion is handling some international departures and holds the international arrivals lounge. Domestic flight operations have transferred to the airport’s cargo terminal.

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WBP NEWS

The latest news from ACI’s World Business Partners

New duty free shops unveiled in Rome Aeroporti di Roma (AdR) and LS travel retail have officially launched their newly modernised and expanded stores in Rome Fiumicino Airport.

Over the past six months, LS travel retail Roma have totally refurbished more than 4,800sqm of space.

As a result, eight new stores were unveiled: three Aelia Duty Free stand-alone stores, and five Aelia Duty Free/Casa Del Gusto combi-stores. An Acqua Di Parma shopping area within an Aelia Duty Free store was also unveiled.

LS travel retail Roma, since October 2012 the operator of the duty free/duty paid stores in Rome airports, is determined to make Fiumicino a model of excellence, and invested more than €13 million CAPEX to completely revamp the existing stores and to create new ones.

Dag Rasmussen, CEO of Lagardère Services, enthuses: “The great performance of these stores is due to the huge scale of our initial investment, our shared approach with Aeroporti di Roma, the quality of our retail strategies, these amazing new retail environments, the expansion and training of the sales teams, and the fantastic team spirit that is shared right across the airport.”

Royal honour for NATS

NATS, the UK-based global provider of air traffic services, has won the Duke of Edinburgh’s Navigation Award for Technical Achievement.

The award is conferred by the Royal Institute of Navigation, of which the Duke is the patron.

NATS was selected for the development of iFACTS, which the institute has described as “one of the most advanced air traffic control systems in the world.”

Peter Chapman-Andrews, director of the Royal Institute of Navigation, said: “I congratulate NATS, and its partners Altran and Lockheed Martin, for having developed iFACTS, an important and impressive innovation that is proving to be so effective at improving air traffic safety and capacity, at a time when the long-term trend is for the number of flights to continue to increase.”

In essence, iFACTS is a set of tools that reduces a controller’s workload and increases the amount of traffic they can safely handle.

Most remarkably, it means controllers can literally see into the future and predict aircraft positions, heights and headings up to 18 minutes ahead of time, reaping obvious capacity and environmental benefits.

Avinomics GmbH Contact: Dr Philipp Goedeking, managing director Address: Boersenstr. 2-5, 60313, Frankfurt, Germany Tel: +49 (0)69 509517852 Email: goedeking@avinomics.com Website: www.brandinside.de/firma/Avinomics_GmbH Consultancy for financial and air transport companies, in particular the analysis, prognosis and assessment of air transport markets and air transport companies, and all other kinds of strategic and operational management consulting for financial and aviation companies worldwide.

LanguageLine Solutions Contact: Chey Reynolds, marketing director Address: 1 Lower Ragsdale, Building 2, Monterey, CA 93940, USA Tel: + (212) 766-3867 Email: creynolds@languageline.com Website: www.languageline.com LanguageLine Solutions is a global leader in over-thephone language access. Over 200 languages and American and British Sign Language, 6,000 interpreters 24/7, including Video Remote Interpreting.

Corporate Spirit Contact: Juha Ala-Lipasti, head of international operations Address: Corporate Spirit CS Oy, Valkjärventie 7A, 02130 Espoo, Finland Tel: +358 9 4520 7333 Email: juha.ala-lipasti@corporatespirit.fi Website: www.corporateimage.fi Frontier Economics is a specialist economics consultancy, with particular expertise in the economic regulation of the aviation sector and other network industries. Our clients include Heathrow, Singapore Changi Airport and easyJet. ESRI Contact: Terry Bills, transportation industry manager Address: 380 New York Street, Redlands, CA 92373, USA Tel: +1 909 793 2853 Email: tbills@esri.com Website: www.esri.com Esri’s geographic information system (GIS) software supports aviation organisations worldwide. Airport managers are discovering that GIS technology is an excellent tool that provides unique information and analytical capabilities not available in other information systems. Esri offers a suite of software that integrates spatial data with airport facility management systems, planning and noise modelling systems, databases and CAD systems, weather surveillance and other satellite-based data collection systems.

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WBP

Dufry celebrates Brazil awards Dufry has signed long-term contracts in São Paulo, Brasilia and Natal to operate duty free and duty paid spaces.

The ten-year contract means the concessions operator, in partnership with industrial group Brasif, will run 19,707sqm of retail space at the airports once expansions at the facilities are complete.

A statement said the contracts “will allow Dufry to substantially strengthen travel retail in Brazil and to capture the true potential of the Brazilian airport retail business.”.

At São Paulo’s Guarulhos Airport, Dufry will add 6,860sqm of concessions, with two walk-through travel retail stores in arrivals and departures. In addition, it plans to introduce stand-alone branded boutiques for the first time in Brazil. In total, 15 shops are anticipated, including a 204sqm Hudson store.

A second contract with Inframerica Group will allow Dufry to redesign the entire commercial space at Juscelino Kubitschek International Airport in Brasilia and at São Gonçalo do Amarante International Airport in Natal.

Plans include operating 1,685sqm of duty free and 2,917sqm of duty paid space at the two airports, with multi-categories and branded shops in addition to Hudson convenience stores.

Dufry’s CEO, Julian Diaz, commented: “The prospects in Brazil for infrastructure investments are enormous and the airports are only the forefront of the changes to come in Brazilian transportation infrastructure.”

In the bag Babcock International Group has awarded Crisplant a Residential Service Contract for support and maintenance of all BEUMER and Crisplant BHS installed across Heathrow.

Crisplant will provide round-the-clock, on-site personnel for a full range of maintenance services, including operative and technical system support; preventive and corrective maintenance and inspection; spare parts management and contingency planning as well as system analysis and optimisation.

The contract covers all Crisplant and BEUMER tilt-tray sorters installed in Heathrow Terminals 1, 4 and 5, between 1997 and 2008.

The companies will work together to achieve performance criteria set by operator Heathrow Airport Limited.

Big five for San Diego

San Diego International Airport (SAN) has five new dining options, including outlets from three national brands.

Qboda Mexican Grill, Red Mango and Peet’s Coffee & Tea are now serving travellers at the airport’s Terminal 2 West. Alongside these independent brands, SSP America has also inaugurated outlets of its own UrbanCrave and Camden food co.

Terminal 2 West includes the Sunset Cove dining and shopping venue, part of the Green Build, a $1billion project to expand commercial offerings and open 10 extra gates.

With the new units, SSP America now has 17 restaurants operating at the airport, where it is the primary F&B concessionaire.

Lockheed Martin acquisition

US giant Lockheed Martin has acquired the Scottish technology company, Amor Group.

The acquisition allows Lockheed Martin to extend and strengthen its capabilities in the UK public sector, in addition to a number of adjacent markets including energy and transportation. The deal, details of which have not been disclosed, will make the company a top ten ICT player in the UK. Amor Group will become a part of the Information Systems & Global Solutions business. Its CEO, John Innes, commented: “We were at the stage in our life cycle where we were looking at refinancing to support our growth ambitions as well as allow our private equity partners to exit in line with their original investment plans.”

He described the acquisition as “the perfect fit at the right time”, adding that Lockheed Martin offers “a strong platform for growth in terms of talent, clients, geographic footprint, offerings and investment.”

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On the case

Vanderlande Industries kicked off the installation of a new baggage handling system (BHS) at Brazil’s São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport in August.

The contract, due for completion in April in time for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, was awarded by Consórcio Invepar-ACSA. The system will have three check-in islands with 72 positions and one check-in for transfer passengers. Two HELIXORTER tilt tray sorters with 24 destinations will manage baggage sorting.

An early bag store with 1,000 places and 500 manual storage positions is included in the contract, as well as five Level 1 and two Level 3 screening machines and seven tilted TRIPLANAR carousels.

Full system redundancy ensures operations can continue in case of any fault, or during routine maintenance. Overall control of the system will be managed by the company’s own integrated VIBES software suite.

Across the Pacific, Vanderlande has signed a contract with Shanghai Airport Authority (SAA) to supply the BHS for Terminal 1 at Shanghai Pudong International Airport.

The company supplied the existing baggage carousels in the terminal in 1997, as well as the BHS for SAA-operated Hongqiao International Airport in 2008. It will now modify Pudong’s BHS to accommodate the anticipated future growth at the airport.

The existing BHS will remain operational while the project is carried out. The system is expected to go live in April 2015.

The replacement for Vanderlande’s CEO, Peter Gerretse, has also been announced. Govert Hamers will take up the role on January 1. He has been the CEO for shipbuilder IHC Merwede since 2005 and has been on the supervisory board for Vanderlande for the last two years.

ENVIRONMENT NEWS

Going green Airport World rounds up the latest environmental news from across the globe.

Hong Kong aims to become world’s greenest airport

Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) has outlined its sustainability performance in a report entitled: Sustaining Our Capacity – Our Blueprint for Shared Growth.

The report outlines how AAHK’s core sustainability values and recent initiatives have influenced the management of Hong Kong International Airport.

It provides a review of the authority’s performance and initiatives in three key areas: safety and security; economy; and quality of life. It covers the period from April 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013 – the same period as AAHK’s 2012/13 financial report.

Future steps are outlined in the document, including the intention to improve safety of airport operations by reducing injuries to passengers and airport staff, and installing additional screening facilities.

While work on the Midfield and Western aprons will continue, the authority plans to complete its Environmental Impact Assessment for the airport’s potential three-runway system within the next year.

The report also states AAHK’s target to work towards “becoming the world’s greenest airport” by initiating a benchmarking study.

Dr Marvin Cheung Kin-tung, chairman of AAHK, said: “AAHK has long incorporated sustainability considerations into its everyday operations and in planning for future development.

“This report will enable us to explain to our staff, business partners and other stakeholders our long-standing environmental and social commitments, as well as our progress this year on a range of initiatives. It is also the first step in developing a more structured sustainability strategy for AAHK.” The report was prepared with reference to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and the Environmental, Social and Governance Reporting Guide issued by The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited.

Green machine

ACI Europe has rewarded the environmental efforts of Aéroports de Paris (ADP) by renewing the Airport Carbon Accreditation status of its Paris gateways.

It has ratified the Level 3 Airport Carbon Accreditation of CDG and Orly and the level 2 certification of Paris-Le Bourget.

“These certificates are testament to our ongoing efforts to reduce the emissions related to our own power consumption and also the fruition of the work we have been doing with our partners,” enthuses Didier Hamon, ADP’s group secretary general, with responsibility for the environment.

“We are fully in line with our commitments to reduce our CO2 emissions by 25% between 2009 and 2015.”

According to Hamon, the award ensures that CDG and Orly airports – part of this certification programme since 2010 – are now at the front of the pack of European airports in the battle against climate change.

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Sound of silence

British Airways (BA) has taken charge of two ground run enclosures (GREs) at London Heathrow that will allow it to test its A380 engines without causing noise disturbance for nearby communities.

The GREs are designed for post-maintenance engine testing, including take-off power for aircraft including the double-decker A380, the world’s largest passenger plane.

Duncan Hislop, BA property development manager at Heathrow, said the carrier is committed to “reducing the impact of noise levels on neighbouring communities as far as possible”.

Through consultation with local authorities, the GREs have been sited to protect neighbouring communities from noise during testing.

IAC Acoustics, which built the GREs for BA, said its modular design also offers an improved aerodynamic performance to meet the demands of the ultra-high bypass turbofan.

The next-generation GREs cut the effect of engine noise, vortices and re-ingestion, which could make engines stall, added the firm.

A combination of Jetshield rear walls with Aerowall side walls and IAC Powerflow silencers will enable the GREs to be used more often in previously impossible conditions, said IAC Acoustics.

Several large scale projects, particularly involving renewable energy sources, have recently contributed to ADP’s fight to reduce emissions: • The commissioning in the fourth quarter of 2012 of a biomass plant that will ultimately generate 25% of the heating requirements at Paris-CDG • The arrival of the first electric vehicles in October 2012 [ADP plans to acquire 200 electric vehicles between now and 2015] • The commissioning in 2013 of a photovoltaic plant or solar farm at Paris CDG. The latter development resulted in the installation of more than 4,000sqm of ground based solar panels capable of generating 157MWh of electricity per year that will be fed directly into ADP’s network.

This facility alone will mean savings of seven tonnes of CO2 per year.

ENVIRONMENT NEWS

ACI-NA enviro awards honours four gateways

ACI-NA has announced the winners of its 2013 Environmental Achievement Awards – San Francisco International Airport, Vancouver Airport Authority, Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and Victoria Airport Authority.

The awards recognise outstanding achievement in the categories of Environmental Management; Mitigation; Outreach, Education and Community Involvement; and Innovative/Special Projects.

The winning airports must demonstrate the environmental benefit of their project and its innovative approach, effective implementation, applicability and cost-effectiveness.

“We were extremely impressed with the quality of all the airports’ submissions this year, and the strong competition once again highlighted airports’ commitment to reducing our industry’s environmental footprint,” stated Deborah McElroy, ACI-NA’s interim president.

San Francisco International Airport’s Climate Action Plan secured it the Environmental Management Award.

The airport developed a Climate Action Plan in 2008 and has updated it every year since. This year’s updates reflect on the success of SFO’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to airport operations. It lowered its GHG emissions from airport-controlled operations in 2012 to 34% below 1990 emissions level of 50,000 tonnes.

This was achieved by supplying conditioned air and electric power to all parked aircraft and incentives for low-emissions car rentals, recycling more than 77% of solid waste, and constructing the AirTrain system to eliminate the need for rental car shuttle buses.

Vancouver Airport Authority’s Green Commuter program earned the Outreach, Education and Community Involvement Award.

Vancouver Airport Authority’s studies show that the airport growth rate within 20 years will put a heavy burden on current infrastructure through increased vehicle trips. To mitigate this, the airport launched a programme in 2005, the Green Commuter Program to encourage employees to use forms of transportation other than single-occupancy vehicles.

The programme includes planning, infrastructure, education and promotion of biking to work though ‘Bike to Work Week’. In 2009, the Canada Line rapid transit line was opened, and by 2012, approximately 16% of the authority’s 21,000 employees used this line to reach the airport.

The airport also offers electric charging stations with no fee in premium locations. Bicycle lanes and connecting paths have been added to the transportation network, and the terminal building has bicycle racks and secure storage areas for employees. By 2012, 24 kilometres of bicycle infrastructure connected the airport to surrounding areas, with an additional one kilometre to be added in 2013.

The airport provides a comprehensive incentive programme to all employees who commute by means other than single-occupancy vehicles.

Other incentives are offered, such as National Commuter Challenge and Bike to Work Week to raise awareness of the Green Commuter Program.

Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport’s Force-Main Deicing Discharge System won it the Special/Innovative Projects Award.

Completed in 2012, the Force-Main project provides crucial supplemental sanitary capacity to the airport’s spent aircraft de-icing fluid runoff (SADR) management system.

Since 1984, Detroit Metro has faced a significant challenge of managing glycol-contaminated stormwater with ageing infrastructure while ensuring safe flight operations.

Remote de-icing pads and an extensive spent aircraft de-icing fluid recycling system was not enough due to insufficient sanitary sewage treatment capacity, which led to regulatory compliance issues.

The Force Main project presented many engineering challenges, yet the result proved to be a very successful project within a comprehensive stormwater management programme.

The project was completed over the course of seven years and was first used for the 2012-2013 de-icing season and provided an additional one million gallons per day outlet capacity, which improved the airport’s ability to handle small volumes of spent fluid with higher concentration.

And finally, Victoria Airport Authority’s Reay Creek Restoration project won it the Mitigation Award.

Although the airport is not the cause of the pollution in Reay Creek – an important spawning habitat for coho and chum salmon in British Columbia – it implemented a comprehensive stormwater management programme and developed a long-term restoration plan to reduce concentrations of pollutants in the water.

Since construction of a 200 meter-long diversion channel to divert stormwater around the original creek channel, water samples indicate contaminant loads have been reduced and that no heavy metal pollutants are present.

This example of a comprehensive integrated stream rehabilitation plan has been successful thus far and is expected to improve over time as the wetland matures, says ACI-NA. AW

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The last word FAA Administrator, Michael Huerta, talks to Joe Bates about leadership, budgets, safety and the development of the US airport system.

What does it feel like to be the leader of an organisation with responsibility for an airport system of nearly 20,000 airports and an annual budget of close to $16 billion?

In one word – honoured. Our airports — commercial service to general aviation — are not only vital to the nation’s air transportation system, they are a vital part of our basic transportation system moving business people, connecting families, and transporting goods. The challenges of maintaining this system are immense. As you know, some airports are capacity strained and others have not realised their capacity. We are working with airport operators and sponsors to build new airport capacity to meet increased demand through strengthened regional and metropolitan airport system planning and development.

What kind of leader do you have to be – a top businessman, salesman or politician?

In order to be an effective leader of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the administrator has to have a combination of all three traits. He or she has to be a good businessman to effectively oversee an organisation of more than 48,000 employees and a $15 billion budget. In a tough budget climate it helps to have some salesmanship skills to communicate the importance of maintaining investments in critical programmes like NextGen, that will

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not only modernise our airspace, but will create jobs and keep the United States competitive in a global economy.

The job also requires some political skills, balancing the sometimes conflicting needs of lawmakers, the industry and the general public. But most of all, the position requires discipline and vigilance to carry out our mission and maintain the safest transportation system in the world.

What do you consider to be the main opportunities and challenges ahead for the US airport system?

Safety is our top priority, and the FAA continues to work with airports of all sizes to ensure that we continue to identify and mitigate safety risks, wherever possible. We continue to see increased concentration of passenger growth among the nation’s busiest airports, and that creates one of our biggest challenges.

In addition, smaller airports are seeing a decline in activity, so we must find ways to help decrease their financial difficulties. Finding new and innovative ways to enhance the economic and environmental sustainability of airports of all sizes is both our challenge and opportunity.

How many new runways have been built across the US in the last decade?

Since 2000, 24 major airfield projects have been completed at the airports to enhance airport capacity and efficiency. This includes 16 new runways, 3 major runway extensions, 3 major taxiways, and two substantial

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airfield reconfigurations. One of the airfield reconfigurations is complete and one is two-thirds complete. Additionally, in the last five years, two replacement airports for non-hub primary airports opened, and a military airfield was converted to civil use, replacing a non-primary commercial service airport.

Has this been enough to cope with demand?

The 24 airfield projects completed since 2000 have provided those airports with the potential to accommodate more than 2 million additional annual operations. This has helped, but there are still some locations that are capacityconstrained and delay-prone. We are continuing to work with those airport authorities to help ease delays. While new airfield infrastructure can substantially enhance capacity, new NextGen technology can also help increase operational efficiency and reduce delays in some locations.

Based on traffic forecasts, how many more terminals, runways and possible airports will be needed over the next 20 years?

Operations at large-hub airports are projected to grow by 1.6% annually over the next 20 years.

The large-hub airports, which handle about 70% of US passengers, have identified significant development needs to improve efficiency, capacity, and provide adequate passenger terminal facilities. To meet increased demand, the FAA is providing grants for the

construction of two runway extensions at Fort Lauderdale, and John F Kennedy airports; the completion of two airfield reconfiguration programmes at Chicago O’Hare and Philadelphia airports; and the possible addition of three new runways beyond 2020 at Charlotte, Denver, and Washington Dulles airports.

No major new airports are proposed in the foreseeable future.

ACI-NA has called for the introduction of a US aviation policy that provides more “flexible, adequate funding sources for infrastructure improvements”. What is your response?

The FAA fully agrees with the need for flexible, adequate capital funding sources. For the last three years, the FAA has proposed increases in the PFC limit, along with structural changes to AIP that would help ensure the highest priority projects can be implemented in a timely manner. At the same time, the users of the system also have to support the infrastructure necessary to support the operations. AIP and PFC have always been a crucial part of the overall capital funding portfolio, but they’ve never been the sole solution. Many US airports are moving toward more effective and flexible use and lease arrangements with the airlines, and we support that trend.

The FAA is also beginning a process to review the existing US airport rates and charges policy.

Factfile

THE LAST WORD

Name: Michael Huerta Age: 56 Job Title: Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration Nationality: American Years in Aviation Industry: 25 years Best Known for: His transportation expertise and business acumen Little Known Fact: He enjoys National Standard Race skiing with his son On the subject of flexibility, does it still take an average of 10 years to build a new runway in the US? If you measure from the first planning meeting until a new runway is commissioned and operational, 10 years is a reasonable historical average.

However, many airport sponsors have significantly improved on that time-frame, by developing and making available long-term plans so neighbouring communities can plan and develop in a way that anticipates future airport development.

Some other best practices include early consideration of environmental issues; concurrent environmental reviews by federal and state agencies; dedicated resources to support the necessary work; and a formal process for resolving issues among the FAA and environmental resource agencies.

Since 2001, the FAA has been actively engaged on a number of fronts to reduce the timeline necessary to conduct an environmental impact statement while still complying with federal and state environmental laws and regulations.

Will the recent privatisation of San Juan’s Luis Munoz Marin International Airport prove the catalyst for change to the US airport business model?

Congress established the FAA’s Airport Privatization Pilot Program to explore privatisation as a means of generating access to various sources of private capital for airport improvement and development projects. The ownership structure of airports in the United States is a local issue, and each airport sponsor has to determine whether that option meets their needs.

What is the latest news on NextGen? The FAA continues to deliver benefits as we implement NextGen, which is transforming our national airspace. The integration of satellite based technology, collaborative communications, and innovative procedures will reduce delays, fuel, and carbon emissions and ensure that we maintain the safest aviation system in the world.

Airports across the country are benefiting from NextGen

technologies and procedures that improve surface operations.

The Airport Surface Detection Equipment — Model X (ASDE-X) is being used at 38 US airports to track the movement of aircraft and vehicles on runways and taxiways. ASDE-X improves situational awareness and makes runways safer. We are improving communications between air traffic controllers and pilots using data communications. Controllers are currently testing Data Comm tower departure clearances at Memphis and Newark International Airports. Data Comm will help reduce errors and increase efficiency.

With NextGen, more precise departure and arrival paths will optimise routing and operations, especially for congested metropolitan areas. Increased use of Performance Based Navigation, or PBN, will give aircraft more freedom in the sky to choose more direct and fuel-efficient routes. PBN offers efficiencies for both domestic flights and international flights.

In Seattle, as part of our Greener Skies initiative, airlines are using precision routes to shave

four to eight minutes off flight times, saving millions of dollars per year. PBN also is saving the customer time allowing airlines to get aircraft off of runways more quickly. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the busiest in the world, can clear an additional 10 planes per hour using PBN. Finally, the FAA’s new deputy administrator, Michael Whitaker, will serve as the FAA’s chief NextGen officer. In this role, he will be responsible for fostering the transformation of our national airspace.

Do you have a favourite airport and why?

I don’t have a favourite, but there is a general aviation airport that has a special place in my heart, since it helped foster my passion for aviation. It is Flabob Airport in Riverside, CA, where I would go to watch planes after school. As a young adult, I had a newspaper route and the people always wondered why their newspapers were delivered late.

They were late because I stopped at the airport to watch planes take off and land before I delivered the newspapers.

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TRAFFIC DATA

ACI Traffic trends

Growth rates fell across the world to more modest levels for the month of July as compared to previous months, according to the latest traffic figures released by ACI. While the Asia-Pacific region leads global growth in passenger traffic at +5.9% year-over-year, overall global growth is at +2.2%. The world’s top 20 busiest airports in terms of passenger traffic achieved growth of 1.6% for the month of July, while the world’s two busiest airports experienced declines in passenger traffic. Both Atlanta (ATL) and Beijing (PEK) observed a decline in passenger traffic by 3.2% and 2.7% respectively.

World passenger trends

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World passenger trends by region

Source: ACI. AW

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