Asia-Pacific Airports - Issue 2, 2017

The official publication of ACI Asia-Pacific www.aci-asiapac.aero

Master planning & Design: Building for the future In the spotlight: Master planning & design Airport report: Sunshine Coast

Issue 2, 2017 www.aci-apa.com

In review: ACI Asia-Pacific’s 12th Regional Conference Plus: IT innovation, regional & WBP news

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ASIA-PACIFIC AIRPORTS MAGAZINE

VIEWPOINT

MAKING HEADLINES Asia-Pacific Airports editor, Joe Bates, reflects on the fact that there is never a quiet time in the aviation industry.

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hen I was a newspaper reporter many years ago, I used to look forward to the peace and quiet of the summer months when everything slowed down; parliament went into recess, schools closed for a few months and everyone went on holiday.

To me, it was bliss, and time to go out and enjoy the Great British Summer as, believe it or not, the sun does occasionally come out in the UK and it usually happens over the summer months!

The only downside to this little piece of paradise for me, back then anyway, was the fact that with so many institutions closed and people on holiday or dreaming of their impending vacation, so in holiday mode, good news stories were at a premium.

Indeed, it was considered so difficult to find anything interesting to write about during the summer months that it was christened “the silly season” by the newspaper industry, and we would spend far too much of our time writing about the trivial, quirky and bizarre than real news, just to fill pages.

If this is still the case then there must be something wrong with the reporters because, in today’s super connected world, 24/7 global news is never more than the touch of a button away.

This ability to find out about something, no matter where or when it happens, and usually within minutes or seconds of it happening – via any number of different channels – effectively means that the ‘silly season’ no longer really exists.

And this is particularly true for the aviation industry where the news – good and bad – really is constant and year-round.

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As I write this, for example, Xi’an Xianyang International Airport has just selected the design team for its new terminal and ground transportation centre; Wellington Airport has broken ground on a new hotel; Musat International Airport has chosen the company to design the duty free area in its new terminal; and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai International Airport has opened its own medical centre.

And, of course, we cannot forget British Airways, which has been in the news for all the wrong reasons this summer following its disastrous IT systems failure over a Bank holiday weekend that led to the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights that caused travel chaos for 75,000 passengers and left it facing a compensation bill in excess of £100 million.

Grabbing the right kind of headlines in this issue of Asia-Pacific Airports is Australia’s Sunshine Coast Airport, which is fast gaining a reputation for itself as a highly ambitious regional gateway and environmental pioneer.

In this ‘master planning & design’ themed issue we learn about plans to develop Kazakhstan’s airports; planning for sustainability; and how airports can use data to improve the travel experience and boost revenues.

Our second issue of 2017 also includes comprehensive coverage of the 12th ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly, Conference and Exhibition in Doha. While elsewhere we report on some of the biggest regional news stories of the last few months; look back at this year’s Air Transport IT Summit in Brussels; and turn the spotlight on ACI’s World Business Partners. Life in the aviation industry is certainly never dull!

APA www.aci-apa.com

ASIA-PACIFIC AIRPORTS MAGAZINE

CONTENTS

Asia-Pacific Airports Issue 2, 2017

3 Making headlines Asia-Pacific Airports editor, Joe

20 ACI news New resolutions, the election of the

Bates, reflects on the fact that there is never a quiet time in the aviation industry.

8 News A snapshot of some of the biggest stories from across the region.

10 Warmest of welcomes Joe Bates looks back at some of the highlights of ACI Asia-Pacific’s Regional Assembly, Conference and Exhibition in Doha.

ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Board for the next three years and committee news make the headlines, writes Vivian Fung.

24 On the radar Sunshine Coast Airport’s general

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manager, Peter Pallot, talks to Joe Bates about his gateway’s expansion plans, route development, green credentials and new investors.

www.aci-apa.com

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CONTENTS 30 Spotlight on Kazakhstan How are Kazakhstan’s airports

40 All about data New technology continues to

faring and what are the plans for their future development?

Lufthansa Consulting’s Askhat Torshin answers the big questions.

provide airports with new sources of data about passenger behaviours than can be used to improve operational efficiency and boost revenues, writes Tony Chapman.

36 Planning for sustainability Embracing sustainable development 44 Intelligent solutions will help ensure the long-term What’s the latest in the world

futures of airports across the globe, writes Landrum & Brown’s managing consultant, Sara Christen-Hassert.

of airport IT? Joe Bates reports back from the recent Air Transport IT Summit.

46 World Business Partners News, views and reviews from the region’s WBPs.

Asia-Pacific Airports (APA) www.aci-apa.com Editor Joe Bates joe@aci-apa.com +44 (0)1276 476582 Design, Layout & Production Mark Draper mark@aci-apa.com +44 (0)208 707 2743

APA Issue 2, 2017

Published by Aviation Media Ltd PO BOX 448, Feltham, TW13 9EA, UK Managing Director Jonathan Lee jonathan@aci-apa.com +44 (0)208 707 2743 Advertising Manager Ellis Owen ellis@aci-apa.com +44 (0)208 274 1540

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Asia-Pacific Airports (APA) is published four times a year for the members of ACI Asia-Pacific. The opinions and views expressed in APA are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect an ACI policy or position.

The content of this publication is copyright of Aviation Media Ltd and should not be copied or stored without the express permission of the publisher.

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SECTION NEWS TITLE

Headline Standfirst PRIVATE SECTOR BOOSTING AIRPORT DEVELOPMENT The private sector is becoming increasingly involved in the development of airports across ACI’s Asia-Pacific’s region as many look for Body copy funding to build new capacity enhancing infrastructure, according to ACI Asia-Pacific’s regional director, Patti Chau.

Talking at ACI’s Airport Economics & Finance Conference and Exhibition in London earlier this year, she noted that at Osaka’s airports in Japan, and elsewhere across the region, privatisation projects were allowing the private sector to help develop airports and fund costly airport expansion projects.

“The privatisation drive is most apparent in countries like Japan where the Osaka airports and Sendai deals were finalised last year, and projects in the pipeline for Tokamatsu, Fukuoka, Kobe and New Chitose are expected to be completed in the next two to three years,” said Chau.

“Privatisation is also back on track in the Philippines and India, where a new National Civil Aviation Plan approved the introduction of a hybrid till system for all airports. This provides much needed regulatory certainty in the market that will help attract private participation in projects like Navi Mumbai and Goa Mopa Greenfield Airport.

“The haste for privatisation also appears to be speeding up in the Middle East, especially for the oil producing nations, where PPP projects are increasingly being considered to help reduce the financial burden on them resulting from low oil prices in the long-term.

“Saudi Arabia’s vision is to privatise all of its 27 airports by 2020 and, elsewhere in the region, privatisation projects are taking shape in Indonesia, Iran, Kuwait and Vietnam.”

XI’AN XIANYANG’S NEW TERMINAL MOVES A STEP CLOSER China’s Xi’an Xianyang International Airport has selected a design team led by Landrum & Brown (L&B) as the competition winner for its new East Terminal/Ground Transport Centre (GTC).

Between them the 700,000sqm new terminal and GTC encompass more than 1.1 million square metres of floor space at the international gateway to the historic city of Xi’an.

L&B will provide ongoing leadership of the architectural design services for this major programme supported by other team members that include the North West Design Institute, Chinese Architectural Design Institute and other specialists.

In addition to the new 40 million passenger per annum capacity East Terminal, the airport will be equipped with four parallel runways upon completion of the latest phase of its infrastructure development programme. Ultimately, the airport is projected to serve 120mppa with a five-runway system.

Xi’an Xianyang International Airport handled 37 million passengers in 2016 to cement its status as the eighth busiest airport in China.

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GOING THE EXTRA MILE Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Airport has unveiled 50 new passenger service associates (PSAs), whose sole task is to assist and help travellers as they journey through the fast growing Indian gateway.

The initiative is the first launched under operator GHIAL’s new ‘Passenger is Prime’ programme, which aims to further enhance Hyderabad’s already growing reputation for providing outstanding customer service.

Easily identifiable in their turquoise green t-shirts with ‘Passenger is Prime’ & ‘Happy to Help’ emblazoned on the back, GHIAL promises that the PSAs will be located in check-in areas, at security checkpoints, transfers areas and security hold/ boarding zones.

GHIAL CEO, SGK Kishore, says: “Many travellers, especially those who are not frequent flyers or those with special needs, sometimes find it challenging to navigate through the many steps involved in modern air travel, and they often encounter moments of anxiety during their journey.

“Keeping this in mind, we have inducted a team of highly motivated young professionals who are intuitive, empathetic and willing to go the extra mile to make passenger journeys through our airport a pleasant and hassle-free experience.

“Going forward, we will collaborate with other key stakeholders such as airlines, Customs, CISF and Immigration to launch more initiatives like this and make our airport a more safe, secure and pleasant experience for everyone.”

BED AND BOARD A groundbreaking ceremony has officially marked the start of the construction of a new NZ$36m hotel at Wellington Airport.

The Honourable Chris Finlayson officially launched the construction of the four-star 134-bed hotel at the northern end of the airport. The hotel will be managed by Rydges and include a restaurant, bar and conference facilities.

The new addition, which is expected to welcome its first guests in late 2018, will be fully integrated with the Main Terminal Building, built above the International terminal and accessible directly from inside a newly redeveloped passenger lounge.

Steve Sanderson, Wellington Airport’s chief executive, said: “It is part of the airport’s wider efforts to improve the experience of everyone who has to catch an early flight or arrive on a late one.” www.aci-apa.com

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Warmest of welcomes

Joe Bates looks back at some of the highlights of ACI AsiaPacific’s Regional Assembly, Conference and Exhibition in Doha.

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atar’s famed hospitality proved as warm as the temperatures outside throughout a memorable 12th ACI Asia-Pacific Regional

Assembly, Conference and Exhibition in Doha.

For 400 delegates representing 175 organisations from 54 countries across the globe, the conference is the region’s main airport event of the year and, as usual, it didn’t disappoint with lots to learn and take on board.

Indeed, this year’s event included a pre-conference ‘Aviation Talks’ summit, which opened with a panel discussion about the ambitious development plans for a number of airports and countries across the Middle East.

The panel – moderated with a smile by Waleed Youssef, KPI Aviation Marketing Solutions’ airport strategy and privatisation director – included Bahrain International Airport Company’s CEO, Mohamed AlBinfalah; Abu Dhabi Airport Company’s acting chief commercial officer, Daniel Cappell; Dr Hamdi Chouk, former director general of the Lebanese Civil Aviation Authority; and King Fahd International Airport’s director general, Turki Abdullah Aljawini.

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Bahrain’s Al-Binfalah revealed that his airport is in the middle of a $1.2 billion development programme to “add a few new assets” that include a state-of-the-art terminal capable of handling up to 14 million passengers annually, an on-site jet fuel depot, new MRO hangar for Gulf Air and a 2,700-vehicle capacity multistorey car park.

Spelling out why the terminal is needed, he said: “The last development of the airport terminal was back in 1994 to raise the airport’s capacity to four million passengers per annum. There has been no investment since, and it is much needed, as we have been processing around nine million passengers annually for quite some time.”

When it opens in mid-2019, the new 210,000sqm terminal will be four times the size of the existing facility, explained Al-Binfalah, who revealed that the overall cost of the airport’s upgrade is being co-funded by Abu Dhabi Development Fund and the government of Bahrain.

King Fahd International Airport’s Aljawini was quick to point out that his airport is one of many in Saudi Arabia to be either in the middle of an upgrade or due one under

ASIA-PACIFIC AIRPORTS MAGAZINE

existing terminals 1, 2, 3 and 4 by 2019 to enable them to handle 24 million international passengers yearly between them.

Elsewhere, Jeddah–King Abdulaziz International Airport expects to open the first 30mppa phase of its new terminal in 2018, while new terminals are also being built in Abha and Arar by the end of 2018 and Jizan by 2020.

Abu Dhabi’s Cappell talked about his gateway’s new Midfield Terminal, which he described as “the most exciting, innovative airport development in the world today.”

In doing so he also reflected on Abu Dhabi International Airport’s past, reminding delegates just how far it, Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates has come since the nation was born 46 years ago.

He noted: “Fifty years ago it would have been impossible to travel to Dubai in one day. Today, it takes just over an hour. In 1960, the population of Abu Dhabi was 25,000. Today it is over 1.75 million.

And finally, 50 years ago, Abu Dhabi Island could only be reached at low tide.

“Our traffic has grown from 4.5 million passengers in 2002 when Gulf Airlines was the main carrier to 20 million in 2014, with a forecast of 24 million in 2017. Today’s growth is being driven by Etihad Airways, the national flag carrier of Abu Dhabi and the fastest growing airline in the history of aviation.

“The pace of development has been astounding and it continues with the Midfield Terminal, which is the largest infrastructure www.aci-apa.com

EVENTS: REGIONAL CONFERENCE

ambitious development plans for the country’s airport system.

He explained that the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) had essentially run the nation’s airports since its creation in 1935 and that today the system comprises 27 airports that between them handled 709,000 flights and 85.3 million passengers in 2016.

These airports include the international gateways of Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam, Ta’if and Medinah, however, with passenger numbers growing by 10% per annum, more capacity is needed to ensure that the Kingdom is equipped to meet future demand.

The government’s response, revealed Aljawini, has been to plan the development of four new airports (Al-Qunfudah, Farasan Island, Riyadh North and Riyadh South) and draft a new five-year business plan for aviation.

In line with this, he stated, GACA has started the “corporatisation” programme of the Kingdom’s airports and other business units in readiness for their possible future privatisation.

GACA also plans transforming some regional airports into regional hubs to feed traffic to the smaller domestic airports in a bid to improve connectivity across Saudi Arabia. Ha’il and Abha are the country’s first newly established regional hub served by Nesma Airlines and flynas respectively.

In terms of new infrastructure at existing airports, he told delegates that Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport has a newly opened domestic terminal – the 12mppa capacity Terminal 5 – and plans to upgrade

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project in the country and will be home to Etihad Airways and its partner airlines when it opens in 2019.

“Our goal is to take the airport commercial proposition to a new level in respect of design, fit out, customer service and experience.”

The second session of the day was 100% concentrated on Doha’s Hamad International Airport, where Jan Metsovitis (VP operations); Michael McMillan (VP facility management); and Suhail Kadri (VP information technology) discussed the gateway’s commitment to innovation and best practice in each of their respective fields.

An Airport Carbon Accreditation Workshop was also on the agenda during the mini-event, which concluded with the Welcome Reception for the Regional Assembly, Conference & Exhibition and the official opening of the exhibition area, which this year boasted 50 booths occupied by 25 exhibitors.

ACI Asia-Pacific’s 12th annual conference got underway properly on Tuesday, April 11, with an opening address from president and managing director and CEO of Sydney Airport, Kerrie Mather.

She praised Hamad International Airport’s commitment to sustainable development.

It recently gained Level 3 certification in ACI’s Airport Carbon Accreditation programme and has introduced collaborative decision-making (CDM) to optimise the management of the airport, but Mather noted that it was far from alone in its efforts.

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“Airports across Asia-Pacific, the world’s fastest growing aviation market, continue to invest and expand their facilities to meet demand while continuing to deliver a world class experience,” enthused Mather.

“Air passenger numbers in Asia-Pacific and the Middle East grew by 9% and 9.4% respectively in 2016, well ahead of the global average of 5.5%, and to cater for this surge investments are required.

“The total applied capital expenditure of airports worldwide in February this year amounted to almost one trillion US dollars, of which $410 million will be spent in Asia-Pacific. This isn’t surprising given the growth of the region.”

She noted that Sydney Airport’s A$2 billion investment programme – which currently involves over 200 construction projects – is driving a “step change in its operations and transforming the end-to-end passenger experience”.

Major airport development projects highlighted by Mather included China’s commitment to building 136 new airports by 2025, raising the number of commercial gateways in the country to 370; India stating that it wants its airport count to double by 2019; and Malaysia Airports unveiling plans to spend $1 billion over the next five years on refurbishing and expanding its airports.

While in the Middle East, where passenger traffic is expected to double by 2035, she reminded all those in attendance that the

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Gulf Cooperation Council has pledged $100 billion towards airport expansion and construction projects.

“These are phenomenal numbers by any measure,” enthused Mather, noting that an ever-increasing number of governments across the region were turning to the private sector to help fund airport development projects.

“Many governments in our region are recognising that private participation can play an important role in developing and upgrading strategic airport infrastructure and in airport privatisations,” she told delegates.

Another source of funding could also come from the newly formed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is expected to raise its lending power by $100 billion by increasing its membership to another 25 countries.

She ended by revealing that the ongoing security challenges facing the world’s airports meant that ACI Asia-Pacific was going to pass a resolution calling for the region’s airports to take “practical and common sense approaches” to improving landside security (See page 20).

Next up was the Leader’s Forum where six CEOs, including Mather, took part in a panel discussion about ‘What defines a best airport’, moderated by John Defterios, CNNMoney’s Abu Dhabi-based emerging markets editor.

She was joined on stage for the session

by Hamad International Airport’s Badr Mohammed Al-Meer; Hong Kong International Airport’s Fred Lam; London APA Issue 3, 2015

City Airport’s Declan Collier; Quito International Airport’s Andrew O’Brian; and Toronto Pearson’s Howard Eng for a wideranging debate that covered everything from the gathering and use of data, customer service, and security challenges to corporate social responsibility (CSR).

On the issue of data, London City Airport’s Collier said: “In the old days, engineering was a big piece of what airports did, we managed large chunks of concrete.

What we are increasingly doing today, is managing data, so we are always looking for people who can analyse the data and point us in the right direction.”

Talking about customer service, Hamad’s Al-Meer told delegates that everything his airport does is geared towards improving the passenger experience, with the emphasis strongly focused on being proactive rather than reactive.

He said that knowledge of its customers allowed Hamad to tailor very different services to different customers with different needs, citing the fact that while some passengers needed immediate and constant help and attention, others did not and preferred little or no human interaction during their time at the gateway.

“The type of information we have from all our stakeholders, which includes the airlines, the ground handlers and government agencies, makes this possible,” explained Al-Meer, noting that the airport would shortly begin the next phase of its expansion programme despite only being open three years.

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Corporate social responsibility initiatives undertaken by their respective airports varied from Hong Kong International Airport’s opening of its own childcare centre to encourage young mums to work there and efforts to attract staff from underprivileged backgrounds, to Sydney’s charity work and Corporacíon Quiport’s decision to join the Inter-American Development Bank’s ‘Shared Value’ programme, which has led to it going into business with a host of small and medium size enterprises from the local community.

A special address by Mohamed Khalifa Rahma from ICAO’s Middle East office followed and then ‘Organisational succession planning to meet future challenges’ came under the microscope in a session moderated

by ADK International’s CEO, Jaap Hoekstra.

The three keynote speakers for the session were Aimen Al Hosni, CEO of Oman Airports Management Company (OAMC); Tan Sri Bashir Ahmad Abdul Majid, former president of ACI Asia-Pacific and advisor to Malaysia Airports; and Dr Hamdi Chouk, chairman of the board of Aviation Minds.

OAMC’s Al Hosni commented: “People matter, and are always important, because you can build state-of-the-art facilities and huge infrastructure, but who manages it? It’s people, so you really need to make sure that your people are ready and capable of managing these facilities.

“People talk a lot about making their customer’s happy, and rightly so, but I think we should be saying make your staff happy, because you will get better results if you do, as they will make your customers even happier.”

He revealed that the prize for OAMC’s ‘Employee of the Month’ wasn’t cash or a gift, but the chance to spend a full-day with him and experience first hand what it is like to run the country’s biggest airport.

“I would encourage all of you to do the same,” said Al Hosni, who used the example of one employee who sat with him from 7.30am until 5pm in the afternoon as an example of why the initiative works. www.aci-apa.com

EVENTS: REGIONAL CONFERENCE

The mega expansion, as he put it, would provide around 15,000 new jobs and create the capacity for the future expansion of fast growing national flag carrier, Eithad Airways.

Quito’s O’Brian said that despite some big differences in the challenges and opportunities faced by airports across the world, one challenge that they all faced was that of meeting growing passenger expectations and the desire for a seamless travel experience.

“The customer wants a pain free experience,” he said. “They expect certain levels of security, services and commercial offerings – and they want free Wi-Fi – as they see these services being offered at other airports around the world.

“Initiatives like ACI’s Airport Service Quality (ASQ) is an excellent customer service programme that helps us benchmark ourselves against other airports in our region and around the world. It helps us understand where we fit, in an international context, and how well we are doing.”

On the topic of social media, London City Airport’s Collier said it was part of his “daily existence as an airport CEO”, so much so in fact that for a year the gateway displayed “live chatter” from passengers about their airport experience on digital screens throughout the airport.

He said doing this allowed airport staff to start a live conversation with passengers and, as a result, customer satisfaction levels “skyrocketed”.

Hong Kong’s Lam echoed Collier’s comments about the importance of social media for communicating with customers, although he warned that failing to respond quickly enough to some tweets could turn a minor issue into a major one that might go on for weeks and months.

“By responding quickly, I mean within minutes or hours and certainly not days as, unfortunately, young people today tend to believe what they read or see on social media and bad perceptions can be damaging,” said Lam.

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“He was with me throughout the day and never left my side. He was even with me when I called my wife,” he said. “He was exposed to everything, so when I asked him what he had learned at the end of the day, he said he it was hectic job, and he didn’t want it!

“He will now go back to the workplace and be an ambassador for the company by telling them this is how things are working and that they could get there by being strong and working hard.”

Tan Sri Bashir noted that in terms of succession planning, “recruiting the right person, for the right position, at the right time” is crucial, as is keeping them happy, challenged and motivated.

“Succession planning is not just about promoting the next guy in the line,” he said.

“It is about finding and developing talent and that involves putting them in the right place, because if you don’t, they will be unhappy, they won’t be interested in development and they will not move up.”

The conference part of Day 1 ended with a fascinating debate on ‘Landside security and crisis communication’ and included Brussels Airport’s head of corporate communications, Nathalie Van Impe, who talked about last year’s horrific terrorist attack on her airport and how operator, Brussels Airport Company, and all staff across the gateway coped in the immediate aftermath of the March 22, 2016 attack, and over the last year.

APA Issue 2, 2017

Summing up, Van Impe, said: “We saw the worst of mankind and the best of mankind on the day and in the weeks and months that followed the attack, and I choose to remember the latter.”

Vince Scanlon, Adelaide Airport’s executive general manager of planning and infrastructure, and Arup’s associate director, Mark Turner, who spoke more generally about aviation’s crisis management efforts, joined her on stage.

ACI Asia-Pacific’s Regional Assembly followed before an action packed first day ended with a Gala Dinner at the nearby Marsa Malaz Kempinski, The Pearl – Doha.

‘Why airports should be bothered with corporate social responsibility?’ and ‘Airport planning and airport cities’ shared the spotlight in the morning of the second day of the conference.

In the CSR session, moderated by KPI Marketing’s managing director, George Karamanos, representatives from Cambodia Airports (Eric Delobel, CEO); Brisbane Airport Corporation (Wendy Weir, environment and sustainability manager); and Sustainability to Action (Sandra Anani, director) explained more about their respective organisation’s CSR philosophies and strategies.

Cambodia Airports’ Delobel revealed that the motto of the VINCI Group is “real success is the success we share”, and, this alone ensured that ‘local integration’ has been key for the company since it started work in Cambodia 20 years ago.

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EVENTS: REGIONAL CONFERENCE As a result of this philosophy, 99% of Cambodia Airports’ 1,600 staff are Cambodian nationals, and it has launched a number of CSR initiatives. They include a commitment to the sustainable growth of its airports; opening a VINCI Training Academy and extending its influence beyond the perimeter fence through supporting archaeological research at Siem Reap and backing Artisans Angkor, a Cambodian social business that has created 1,300 jobs at 48 workshops in Siem Reap that specialise in traditional Khmer craftsmanship such as silk painting, stone and wood carving.

Brisbane Airport’s Weir provided a “snapshot” of CSR initiatives underway at her gateway and stated that airports across the globe should be proud of their efforts and achievements in this area.

Her airport’s CSR efforts included voluntarily publishing its first Sustainability Report under the GRI framework last year “to show the world what we do well, but also what we need to improve on”; community engagement programmes to inform and educate people about the airport’s expansion projects; developing a reconciliation plan with the local indigenous people; and donations to charity groups in the local community.

A global panel comprising Moscow Domodedovo’s deputy airport director, Daniel Burkard; ADP Ingénierie’s business APA Issue 2, 2017

director, Nicolas Deviller; Henan Airport Group’s vice president and aviation marketing director, Shuxia Kang, discussed their own respective development plans during the ‘Airport planning and airport cities’ discussion.

The final session of the conference involved a lively debate on ‘Enhancing customer service with innovative technology’, where a panel comprising Arup’s James Creegan; Tokyo Narita Airport’s Hideharu Miyamoto; Hamad’s Jan Metsovitis; Vancouver International Airport’s Chris Gilliland; and IATA’s Vinoop Goel discussed some of the latest technological advances and their impact on air travel.

Moderator, ACI World’s director of customer experience and technology, Antoine Rostworowski, asked: “Does more self service mean a better service and a better experience? I tend to think that it does because the key objective is innovation to provide better customisation and a more personalised service to passengers.

“It’s all about choice. Those that want a fast track service can use all these new technologies and self-service devices while those that want to see an agent can go and see one who will have more time to deal with them.”

The conference closed with a farewell reception hosted by next year’s host, Tokyo’s Narita Airport. See you in Japan next April!

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ACI ASIA-PACIFC NEWS

Regional update New resolutions, the election of the ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Board for the next three years and committee news make the headlines, writes Vivian Fung.

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embers voted to adopt two new resolutions at the 12th ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly, Conference & Exhibition in Qatar, calling for ‘mutual support within the airport community’ for ACI’s safety, security and training programmes and another to ‘consider strengthening landside security’.

“We called upon members to provide mutual support within the airport community by taking part in ACI APEX in Safety and Security programmes and to make use of ACI training courses and

seminars as we work together towards the long-term sustainability and growth of the air transport industry,” says ACI Asia-Pacific’s regional director, Patti Chau.

“Through this resolution, we wish to provide a positive response to ICAO’s ‘No Country Left Behind’ campaign and remind our members of the ACI services available.

“The second resolution called upon our members to consider enhancing landside security, through practical and common-sense approaches.”

ICAO’S AVIATION SECURITY AND FACILITATION PLAN DEVELOPMENT GROUP

ACI was present at the second meeting of ICAO’s Aviation Security and Facilitation Plan Development Group in Abu Dhabi in May, where it presented a paper encouraging the adoption of One-Stop Security (OSS) in its work plan.

APA Issue 2, 2017

The paper listed a number of success factors for OSS, including the harmonisation of security measures and quality control plans, and invited the meeting, hosted by the UAE’s General Civil Aviation Authority, to discuss other possible success factors and challenges.

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October 16-18 ACI Africa/ACI World Annual General Assembly Port Louis, Mauritius

December 5-7 Airport Exchange Muscat, Oman

2017

November 1-3 The Trinity Forum Bangkok, Thailand

2018

April 23-25 ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Assembly, Conference & Exhibition Narita, Japan

REGIONAL BOARD DIRECTORS – COMINGS AND GOINGS ACI Asia-Pacific’s new Board includes 13 Regional Board Directors, each elected for a three-year term.

New faces include Turki Abdullah Aljawini (King Fahd International Airport, Saudi Arabia); Gholam Hossain Bagherian (Iran Airports & Air Navigation Company, Iran); Eric Delobel (Cambodia Airports, Cambodia); and Greg Fordham (Airbiz, representing World Business Partners).

While re-elected for another three years are Sulaiman Abidin (Yangon Aerodrom Company Limited, Myanmar); Ali Salim Al Midfa (Sharjah Airport Authority, UAE); Derun Li (Shanghai Airport Authority, China); Xue Song Liu (Beijing Capital International Airport, China); Pedro Roy Martinez (AB Won Pat International Airport, Guam);

A Chandrakumaran Nair (Cochin International Airport, India); Sasisubha Sukontasap (Airports of Thailand, Thailand); Il-Hwan Sung (Korea Airports Corporation, Korea; and Dar-jen Tseng (Taoyuan International Airport, Chinese Taipei).

The four new appointments meant that we said goodbye to Aimen bin Ahmed Al Hosni (Oman Airports Management Company, Oman); Kjeld Binger (Airport International Goup, Jordan); Kenichi Fukaya (Narita International Airport Corporation, Japan); and Mark Young (Adelaide Airport Limited, Australia).

Chau commented: “I am confident that this new Board composition will bring new insights to the development of the airport industry in the Asia-Pacific region.” www.aci-apa.com

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ACI ASIA-PACIFC NEWS

Committee review

The fifth ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Economics Committee meeting was held in Doha in April. The committee reviewed the draft ACI Asia-Pacific 2016 Economic Review; proposed two new areas of focus in the 2018-2020 Committee Work Plan; and shared best practice in Airline Credit Management, Pricing Incentives Schemes and LCC Terminals.

The meeting also featured a guest speaker from the ACI Expert Group on Slots who provided an update on ACI’s latest advocacy activities. Jeffrey Loke from Singapore Changi Airport was re-elected as committee chair for a two-year term.

GREEN STRATEGIES

The eighth ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Environment Committee meeting was also concluded during the region’s annual conference in Doha.

The Committee formally endorsed the formation of the Strategic Plan, Climate Change Adaptation and Aircraft Noise Management Working Groups, with deliverables on input to ACI Asia-Pacific’s 2018-2020 Business Plan, case studies/data gathering for noise management and mapping of different approaches to climate adaptation planning in the region.

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ACI Asia-Pacific’s Regional Economics Committee.

DATA SHARING

The 19th meeting of the ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Operational Safety Committee decided that the safety data-sharing programme should be expanded to all AsiaPacific Regular Members in 2018.

The committee also decided to start drafting guidelines on accident investigation and root cause analysis at the next meeting.

SECURITY ISSUES

The 20th meeting of the ACI Asia-Pacific Regional Aviation Security Committee decided to create working groups to draft guidelines to help airports counter insider threats and strengthen cybersecurity.

The meeting discussed and formulated ACI positions for two upcoming ICAO regional security meetings.

Members expressed concern at the safety risks posed by the increased number of checked-in personal electronic devices in aircraft holds since the ban of personal electronic devices in late March 2017.

The committee was of the view that airports impacted by the ban should communicate the restrictions to passengers and other stakeholders, such as airport retailers selling the devices, to facilitate the check-in of duty free electronics as much as possible.

Please visit www.aci-asiapac.aero/about/ main/3/ for more information about ACI Asia-Pacific’s Regional Committees.

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AIRPORT PROFILE: SUNSHINE COAST

On the radar

Sunshine Coast Airport’s general manager, Peter Pallot, talks to Joe Bates about his gateway’s expansion plans, route development, green credentials and new investors.

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here is a saying that good things come to all those who wait, and after waiting nearly half a century to make an impression in the market, Australia’s Sunshine Coast Airport certainly appears to be making up for lost time with traffic on the rise, a new operator on-board and a ‘game-changing’ new runway set to open in 2020.

Indeed, it is making such a favourable impression these days that Australian national flag carrier, Qantas, recently decided to resume services to the Queensland gateway after a 10 year absence.

Its return, and the launch of three weekly Jetstar services to Adelaide, helped the airport set a new traffic record in 2016, handling over one million passengers in a calendar year for the first time in its 56-year history.

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The airport recently won the Routes Asia 2017 Marketing Award for its marketing campaigns and route development achievements, and last October officially became Australia’s newest ‘international’ airport, meaning that it no longer needs to seek annual approvals for Trans-Tasman services between Auckland and the Sunshine Coast.

It is also an environmental leader after becoming Australia’s first carbon neutral airport in ACI’s Airport Carbon Accreditation programme.

There’s no doubting that these are heady days for the airport, and the good news is that things can only get better for it going forward, as its new operators, Palisade Investment Partners, have the financial muscle to fund the development of new infrastructure.

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While the opening of its new 2,450m long runway – being paid for by the former council owners of the airport as part of the lease agreement with Palisade – will finally allow the gateway to handle wide-body aircraft.

The latter point alone opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the airport in terms of route development to other cities in Australia, New Zealand and beyond.

To an outsider it might seem that Sunshine Coast Airport has suddenly become an overnight success story. The reality is actually very different, as it has taken the airport years of hard work to get where it is today.

None know this better than general manager, Peter Pallot, who has dedicated the last 11 years of his life to helping make the airport more appealing to Sunshine Coast residents and the airlines.

“It’s been a long time coming, but this is only the beginning,” admits Pallot, who is the first to note that his airport still remains relatively small despite serving Australia’s ninth largest city region.

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AIRPORT PROFILE: SUNSHINE COAST

A BRIEF HISTORY LESSON

Located on Queensland’s sunny, sub-tropical Sunshine Coast about a 90 minute drive north of Brisbane, the gateway started life as the North Coast Airport back in 1961, and from day one, until fairly recently, essentially served the inbound tourism market.

Queensland is basically the number one place Australians go when they want to holiday at home, and the popularity of two UNESCO Biospheres and the world heritage listed Fraser Island on its doorstep, draws international tourists from all over the world.

This is still the case, of course, but a steadily growing population and a small but expanding route network that has finally given locals convenient connections to Sydney, and subsequently onward destinations across the world, has seen outbound traffic soar in recent years.

Pallot points out that the Sunshine Coast’s population is bigger than the cities of Cairns, Darwin and Gladstone put together, and is expected to grow from 350,000 today to around half a million by 2031.

Diversification of the regional economy – health and education are now important sectors alongside tourism, retail and construction – has created a solid base of around 600,000 people living within the airport’s catchment area that increasingly want to start their journeys abroad from their local airport.

“We were predominantly a domestic airport for a number of years, which is why we may have slipped under the radar of some of your readers, but we have grown as an international inbound destination over the last 10 to 15 years, and our next aim is to develop our international outbound traffic,” says Pallot.

“People want to start their outbound journeys from their local airport rather than being forced to drive all the way to Brisbane to catch a flight, as it is easier and less hassle. I’m glad to say that the significant increase in frequencies to Sydney, now allows most passengers to do this.”

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AIRPORT PROFILE: SUNSHINE COAST

TRAFFIC GROWTH AND ROUTE DEVELOPMENT

Despite the obvious appeal of the Sunshine Coast, passenger traffic at the airport remained relatively static at around 700,000 passengers a year between 2008 and 2014.

However, this was a significant upturn on the 200,000 passengers that passed through the gateway in 2001, the increase between then and 2008 primarily being driven by the entrance into the market of the low-cost carriers, which saw passenger numbers peak at 850,000 in 2007.

Pallot explains that the dip in passenger numbers after 2007 was almost entirely down to the mining boom in north Queensland and western Australia that led to most airlines either reducing frequencies to the Sunshine Coast or ceasing services altogether.

He admits that it was tough to take, but is quick to point out that the airport has bounced back and that traffic is now at an all-time high. And he expects 2017 to be another record year based on first quarter growth of 13% followed by a 23% rise in throughput in April.

Today five airlines (Jetstar Airways, Virgin Australia, Qantas, Air New Zealand and Alliance Airlines) serve Sunshine Coast Airport operating 75 weekly flights between them to four destinations – Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Auckland.

Pallot says that the mix of airlines ensures that both the low cost and premium market are being served at his gateway.

He believes that a lot of the airport’s recent successes in expanding its airline services has APA Issue 2, 2017

been down to the hard work of his route development and marketing teams.

“We understand our market and we know what it needs to better serve our customers. As a result, we spend a lot of time looking for products that best match our market,” says Pallot.

“Our research certainly tells us that there is an unmet market in terms of our outbound traffic, and we can do better on inbound as well, so we are focused on route development full-stop.

“When I first got here in 2006, we were 80% inbound and 20% outbound in terms of our overall traffic. Now the figure is about 60/40, so there has been quite a change, and a lot of that is down to our route development and marketing teams.”

Pallot reveals that his airport’s only non-stop international route to date, Auckland in New Zealand, has been a huge success since being introduced by Air New Zealand six years ago, and is currently growing by around 20% per annum.

“It’s been going gangbusters,” he enthuses. “Admittedly these figures are off of a small-base, but we are a small airport.

They said we couldn’t do it as our market couldn’t support the route, but we’ve proved everybody wrong and I believe that there is more to come.”

In terms of the inbound market, he doesn’t see a potential clash with the nearby Gold Coast Airport for passengers, as he says it caters to a different market than the more family, nature focused, and relaxed atmosphere of the Sunshine Coast.

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AIRPORT PROFILE: SUNSHINE COAST

Airline load factors across the board are in the high 80s, which pleases Pallot, and are arguably representative of more competitive fare levels being offered today than a few years ago.

NEW RUNWAY

Pallot notes that it hasn’t been easy building up the airport’s route network as its existing 1,800m long runway means that it cannot handle wide-body aircraft, and the B737s and A320s serving the Sunshine Coast today operate under payload constraints.

The situation means that Air New Zealand, for example, can fly in from Auckland with full loads but are weight constrained for the return journey. Also, cities like Darwin and Perth are too far away to be reached by a non-stop service.

These problems will, of course, disappear when the airport’s new 2,450m runway costing A$319 million opens in 2020, and Sunshine Coast Airport is capable of handing wide-body aircraft up to the size of the B777, B787 and A330.

“This is one of several game changing projects across the region and it is important that the airport provides the connectivity to this fast developing area,” says Pallot, adding that a A$1 billion hospital (Sunshine Coast University Hospital) recently opened in Birtinya and APA Issue 2, 2017

a new a Central Business District is currently being built on a 54 hectare site in Maroochydore.

“The new runway will allow us to reach the rest of Australia from the Sunshine Coast as well as all of New Zealand, a number of popular destinations in Asia, such as Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as Hawaii, which could serve as a gateway to the US mainland.

“People already come and go to the Sunshine Coast from these places, but they go via somewhere else. From 2020 they will be able to fly direct to us.”

NEW OPERATORS

The airport is still officially in transition from being operated by Sunshine Coast Council to Palisade Investment Partners, an Australian superannuation management fund, which has signed a 99-year lease for the gateway.

As well as bringing money to invest on future expansion projects, Palisade also brings airport experience as it has a stake in Airport Development Group, which owns Darwin, Alice Springs and Tennant Creek airports.

It will be expected to fund “substantial” future upgrades and improvements to the 5,000sqm terminal building to equip it to handle wide-body aircraft as well as the construction of additional car parks and utility buildings.

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GREEN STRATEGY

Sunshine Coast Airport’s green credentials are indeed impressive, and it is not just down to its carbon neutral status in the Airport Carbon Accreditation programme, for it is almost self-sufficient in terms of water use in the terminal due to the harvesting and recycling of rainwater.

And it feeds all of its food waste into OSCA – the acronym of the ‘Onsite, Composting Apparatus’ it has developed in collaboration with a local think-tank – and then uses the mulch it creates to propopgate endangered plant species on the airport site.

Pallot says that the airport’s environmental efforts are being driven by the passion of its staff who recognise that they live in a spectacular part of the world and are keen to do all they can to protect Planet Earth.

“In 2006 we set ourselves the vision of becoming carbon neutral by 2018, and we achieved that this year, so our commitment to the environment is long standing and never ending as we are determined to be Australia’s most sustainable airport,” he comments.

To achieve carbon neutral status, the airport has delivered a 24% reduction in

Scope 1 and 2 carbon emissions, a 9% reduction in electricity consumption per passenger and an 11% reduction in waste to landfill per passenger.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

Pallot believes that good customer service is key to everything and this is reflected in the airport’s approach to the airlines, passengers, its business partners and surrounding communities.

He genuinely wants to give local residents the airport they want and for it to be the catalyst for economic and social growth for the entire region.

His philosophy means that he has set the customer service bar high, and with just 30 staff working for him at the airport, this effectively means that everyone has to be flexible and accommodating when it comes to doing their jobs.

“We are a small team and that means that we all have to do a bit of everything, and that’s what I love about small airports and why I have spent my entire career in them,” enthuses Pallot.

“We can be negotiating an airline deal or talking with the government about a customs agreement one minute and the next we have a baggage issue and we’re out moving bags around or doing a runway inspection.

“It’s great, and so much fun. I can’t imagine being in a job where you were only involved in a tiny part of the business. You talk to any of our team and everyone knows exactly what is going on in any part of the business because they’ve all been up to there and done it.

“When I say that I’ve got a marketing team of one, I really mean that I’ve got a marketing team of 30 because we are all out there, talking about who we are as a business and promoting the airport.

So without doubt, our best ambassadors are our own people.”

I wonder how many bosses at the region’s bigger and better known airports wish they could say the same about APA their staff? www.aci-apa.com

AIRPORT PROFILE: SUNSHINE COAST

The airport doesn’t currently have any airbridge gates, relying at the moment on four A320 parking bays, although they will be joined by two Code E bays and five Code C bays by the completion of the current development programme in 2020.

Pallot reveals that a new master plan for the airport is due to drawn up in the next 18 months and says that he looks forward to working on it with the new board, when it is selected.

Sunshine Coast Council is expected to earn around A$605 million from the deal with Palisade set to officially take over the airport lease in September. It has stated that it has no intention of changing the management team already in place at the airport.

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MASTER PLANNING & DESIGN

Spotlight on Kazakhstan How are Kazakhstan’s airports faring and what are the plans for their future development? Lufthansa Consulting’s Askhat Torshin answers the big questions.

WHAT ARE THE MOST RECENT MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS IN KAZAKHSTAN’S AVIATION SECTOR?

Kazakhstan has demonstrated its intention to comply with international standards and accepted IATA’s Operational Safety Audit as a compulsory requirement for the maintenance of regular flights.

The EU Air Safety Committee recognised the work performed by Kazakhstan’s aviation regulator to ensure that aviation fully complies with the international standards, and removed Kazakhstan from the EU blacklist.

In terms of airports, Astana International Airport has just opened a new terminal as part of the country’s preparations for Astana EXPO 2017 (See box story).

Lufthansa Consulting has helped the railway company – Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZh) – develop an airport holding strategy for 11 state airports. The aim being to successfully develop and co-ordinate the country’s airport operations in line with international safety standards as well as APA Issue 2, 2017

international best practice in commercial and operational management.

Our experts also helped in the preparation for the launch of the new regional passenger carrier Qazaq Air – a subsidiary of sovereign wealth fund Samruk-Kazyna – by validating, updating and expanding the business plan of the airline. Today, Qazaq Air covers around 5% of the domestic market.

WHAT IS THE COUNTRY’S PLAN FOR DEVELOPING ITS AIRPORTS?

As of today, there is no dedicated airport development strategy for Kazakhstan’s 20 airports, 16 of which are allowed to serve international flights.

However, airport development is mentioned in the State Program of Infrastructure Development ‘Nurly Zhol’ and the Strategic Plan for the Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan until 2020, and since the adoption of the programme in 2015, Kazakhstan has modernised 13 runways and nine terminals.

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MASTER PLANNING & DESIGN

Almaty and Astana are Kazakhstan’s main international hubs and the plan is to double the number of key international gateways by the early 2020s. The country’s macro regions are defined as Almaty, Astana, Aktobe, Shymkent and UstKamenogorsk and, in accordance with this programme, all five should benefit from new infrastructure by 2020.

Development of Kazakhstan’s capital city airport, Astana, is mainly driven by the government, which has stated that it wants to establish the city as one of the world’s leading financial centres.

HAS KAZAKHSTAN GOT THE FUNDS TO DEVELOP ITS AIRPORTS ON ITS OWN OR IS IT LOOKING FOR PRIVATE INVESTORS?

A total of 13 airports are currently categorised by ICAO and according to the country’s strategic plan, this number should increase to 15 by 2020.

Our studies discovered that most regional airports require some form of capital expenditure (CAPEX) investment

in order to comply with ICAO’s minimum technical requirements. This is a big ask in a country where many airports are not even able to finance their own operating expenses (OPEX).

The latter situation is, in part, the result of faults in the restrictive regulation on airport charges and a low share of non-aeronautical revenue, and the absence of a subsidy programme for small, commercially non-viable – but socially important – airports.

Today, most major airport investment projects are financed by the state (with certain exceptions in Almaty) and this isn’t likely to change any time soon, although the government is determined to make regulatory reforms to create more incentives for investors.

It is, for example, looking to comprehensively reform the regulation on airport charges and wants to liberalise the ground handling market to introduce competition and end the current monopoly situation at most airports.

Indeed, Kazakhstan recently removed the restrictions that stopped airports earning www.aci-apa.com

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MASTER PLANNING & DESIGN

ASTANA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

The newly completed 47,000sqm terminal in Astana will boost the airport’s capacity to 8.2 million passengers per annum and increase its appeal as a transfer hub, according to chairman, Paolo Ricciotti.

Costing close to $200 million, the new 14-gate Terminal 1 is twice the size of the old terminal and features a number of impressive new retail and F&B offerings.

Its opening will allow the existing terminal to be rebranded as Terminal 2 and used exclusively for domestic flights.

revenue from non-aviation related activities, so things are going in the right direction.

High fuel prices, however, remain an issue for most airlines serving Kazakhstan, and with the notable exception of some Kazakh carriers, all have to buy their fuel from a solitary fuel supplier at each airport. The exempted airlines negotiated their own deals with the government that allows them to buy their fuel direct from the country’s oil providers.

We hope that a new, improved regulatory environment will make airports more attractive to international investors.

WHAT ARE KAZAKHSTAN’S DEVELOPMENT PLANS FOR ALMATY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT?

The airport recently started work on the reconstruction of one of its two runways and construction of two new high-speed taxiways.

The projects will allow the airport to handle up to 27 aircraft movements per hour.

Almaty also urgently needs to expand and modernise its passenger terminal building to raise its capacity, although current regulation does not make the project attractive to the private sector.

In 2015, Kazakhstan announced 100 concrete steps towards the implementation of five institutional reforms, and one of the steps was the establishment of a new airport APA Issue 2, 2017

Ricciotti told Asia-Pacific Airports magazine: “Our key goal is to become the hub of Central Asia by making Astana the region’s main connecting point between cities around the world, and we believe that the new terminal will help us achieve it.”

Transit passengers only represent around 5% of the airport’s passengers today, although international traffic now accounts for 35% of the traffic after a number of new routes launches in 2016, which included a new KLM service to Amsterdam. in Almaty. Our market study confirms the feasibility of a new international airport in Almaty, but only on the basis that it replaces the existing airport as the market isn’t strong enough to support two gateways. We also believe that it will be easier and more cost effective to develop the new hub on the same site as the existing airport.

WHAT MARKET DOES ALMATY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT SERVE?

A total of 4.7 million passengers passed through Alamty International Airport in 2016 to cement is status as Kazakhstan’s busiest gateway.

It serves the city of Almaty and most of southern Kazakhstan, and arguably only faces limited competition from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. Almaty and the surrounding region is home to 3.5 million inhabitants – 20% of the country population. Almaty city’s GDP per capita is the second highest among Kazakhstan’s regions with only the resourcerich Atyrau region achieving higher levels.

The former capital city’s airport also boasts the largest route network of any airport in Kazakhstan, primarily due to the city’s population, business and tourism appeal and being the home base of Air Astana.

In comparison, the country’s second biggest gateway, Astana International Airport, handled 3.4 million passengers last year.

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MASTER PLANNING & DESIGN

It is, however, expected that the airports will be equally matched in the future due to Kazakhstan’s dual hub strategy and traffic development fuelled by business and tourism growth in Almaty and commercial and government sector related travel in Astana.

WHAT TRAFFIC MIX DOES ALMATY CURRENTLY ENJOY?

International transfer passengers have increased significantly in recent years, but still only account for around 11% of all passengers. O&D traffic continues to dominate, equally split between international (48%) and domestic (52%) services.

ARE KAZAKHSTAN’S AIRPORTS 100% GOVERNMENT OWNED AND OPERATED?

Kazakhstan has a mixture of ownership types: government, quasi-governmental ownership (via state holding and national companies) and private. We believe that regulatory change will convince more private players to invest in Kazakhstan’s airport sector.

HOW IMPORTANT IS AIR ASTANA TO TRAFFIC DEVELOPMENT ACROSS THE COUNTRY?

Air Astana accounted for around 53% of the domestic market in 2016 and 41% of the international market, making it the country’s biggest airline by quite some margin.

From the very beginning, Air Astana demonstrated its intention to comply with international standards, and today it successfully competes against a host of international carriers serving the regional market. I would even go as far as to say that, in APA Issue 2, 2017

my personal opinion, Air Astana offers the best product of all the airlines in the region.

And I am certainly not the only one in thinking this, as it is rated a four-star airline by Skytrax.

WHO ARE THE OTHER MAJOR AIRLINES SERVING KAZAKHSTAN?

Kazakh carrier, SCAT Airlines, is the second biggest airline in the market with a 23% share of the domestic market and a 7% share of the international market. Another big player is Aeroflot, which has been the biggest beneficiary of Transaero’s demise and is now the second biggest international airline serving Kazakhstan due to its expansion on Russia-Kazakhstan routes in collaboration with low-cost subsidiary Pobeda Airlines.

Wizz Air launched a twice weekly low-cost service between Budapest and Astana in June, so perhaps the best time to discuss the impact the LCCs have had on the market will be in about a year’s time?

The domestic market isn’t big enough for the high frequency, quick turnaround operations required by traditional LCCs and, once again, existing regulation does little to support the introduction of pure LCC models. As a result, two domestic carriers – Qazaq Air and Bek Air – offer a simplified, low-cost product that partially implements the LCC model. They fared well last year, increasing their market share to 22% from 19% in 2015.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Askhat Torshin is Lufthansa Consulting’s permanent representative for Russia and the CIS. He can be contacted at Askhat.Torshin@LHConsulting.com

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MASTER PLANNING & DESIGN

Planning for sustainability Embracing sustainable development will help ensure the long-term futures of airports across the globe, writes Landrum & Brown’s managing consultant, Sara Christen-Hassert.

W

hat is sustainability? In most sectors, it’s commonly defined as the balance of environmental, financial,

and social goals.

Sustainable practices can reduce the environmental impact of developed infrastructure while at the same time creating financial and operational benefits for a project and social benefits for the community at large. Together, these aspects of sustainability are commonly referred to as the ‘triple bottom line’.

For those who are familiar with this definition, we still sometimes wonder – what does it really mean to be sustainable? How do you get there and how do you know you’ve arrived?

Unfortunately, there is no magic answer.

The answer is different for every airport and its unique mix of ownership, operating characteristics, tenants, concessionaires, services, and the region of the world where it’s located.

Airports throughout the world today are challenged more and more to achieve new goals and targets for improved environmental performance, such as aggressively reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and striving for carbon neutrality, while often dealing with scarce funding and limited staff resources.

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At the same time, many must serve rapidly growing passenger demand, with increases in service and evolving passenger expectations.

As a result, airports need strategies for sustained growth that also control costs and reduce environmental impacts over time.

By starting with a solid plan, an airport can set both short-term and long-term goals for sustainability, set targets to track performance toward those goals, involve key stakeholders that are crucial to achieving targets, and ultimately, maximise efficiency and reduce waste in all processes – hence achieving that elusive triple bottom line.

Planning for sustainability – or the integration of sustainability into the airport planning process – can be applied not only to new development, but also to the operation and maintenance of existing and aging infrastructure.

And it doesn’t only apply to occupied spaces, such as terminal buildings.

Unoccupied structures, pavements, and flatworks also benefit from sustainability planning, and can help an airport achieve its ultimate goals.

EVERYONE WINS

All categories of airport development and operations can benefit from the integration of sustainability into its routine way of thinking.

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Projects and programmes in each of these categories are candidates to be considered in establishing a sustainability plan.

ELEMENTS OF A SUSTAINABILITY PLAN FOR AIRPORTS

Regardless of the type of projects or operational processes that may be included in an airport’s sustainability plan, there are common steps that can be followed to start the planning process.

The results will be unique to each airport, and the level of success depends in part on the extent to which the entire organisation is willing to embrace the vision and the plan. It is therefore important to: • Establish the environmental context – create a foundational baseline for benchmarking future initiatives; • Understand current positions on sustainability – comprehend the airport leaderships’ vision of and the organisation’s culture toward sustainability and understand current practices that may already be working towards that goal; • Develop sustainability goals and targets to achieve your aims – establish a framework, appropriate (and measurable) metrics, and desired timeline for individual categories such as water, air quality, waste, noise, transportation, energy, materials and resources, and green concessions; • Develop sustainability planning guidance – establish technology strategies/best practices for planners, designers, contractors, operations/maintenance mangers and concessionaires/tenants to achieve the airport’s sustainability goals and targets.

Financial Goals Sustainability

Social Goals

Environmental Goals Airports today have many options in how they go about their sustainability planning, and they have many motivators and goals, but no matter how or why it’s done, the key commonality is that all airports undertaking sustainability planning are seeking one overarching thing – increased efficiency. By increasing efficiency, an airport can reduce wastefulness in its processes.

The waste that can be reduced represents an opportunity for potential cost savings as well as better utilisation of available (and often limited) resources, or the time and energy of the airport’s labour force.

RESILIENCY: THE EVOLUTION OF AIRPORT SUSTAINABILITY PLANNING

When you start to think about sustainability in the context of efficiency, it can easily move beyond environmental goals or green initiatives, and when it does, it enters the field of resiliency, which is effectively where the future of airport sustainability is heading.

Resiliency planning is a term that is often associated with assessing your airport’s risk for the unknown events or effects such as a catastrophic event or climate change. How will you deal with an extreme weather event?

Are you prepared to meet the demands of your passengers, tenants, and community at large in the face of a state of emergency?

When you approach resiliency planning as ultimately increasing efficiency of all www.aci-apa.com

MASTER PLANNING & DESIGN

Typically, airport projects fall into one of the following categories, either as capital projects or operations/maintenance programmes associated with them: • Civil – Airside • Civil – Landside • Occupied Buildings (airside and landside) • Unoccupied Buildings (airside and landside)

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MASTER PLANNING & DESIGN

Airport Emergency Plan Operations

Resiliency

Green Concessions

Plan

Waste

Business Plan

Sustainable Airport Targets

Energy

Sustainability Plan Passenger Experience

Transportation

Environmental Management System

Stakeholder Involvement

Noise

Water

Air Quality Materials & Resources

aspects of airport operations, you can begin to understand the full force of this unique opportunity.

A sustainability plan that considers how to improve the airport’s resiliency will reduce vulnerability to catastrophic weather events and maximise emergency preparedness, reduce risk/insurance costs, and ensure business continuity.

Resiliency planning ensures preparedness for changing conditions, while operating an airport efficiently and safely. Benefits include energy, resource, and operational efficiencies; building redundancy into the system; improved reliability to serve growing demand; reduced reliance on outside initiatives; enhanced the passenger experience; and assurance to passengers, tenants, and stakeholders that an airport can respond to rapidly changing conditions.

Airport sustainability programmes, including resiliency planning, are most successful when they are fully integrated in all aspects of airport development and operation activities.

They are applicable early in the planning and design phases of a project, continuing through construction into day-to-day operations and maintenance, as well as through ultimate decommissioning and demolition. This approach takes into account the lifecycle impacts of processes and APA Issue 2, 2017

equipment and not only minimises total costs, but also overall environmental impacts.

Whether an airport has a fully developed sustainability programme with years of data and lessons-learned to look back on and share with others, or whether an airport is in the development stages of a plan that will someday be an all-encompassing programme, it’s important to understand that anything done to increase efficiency and reduce waste, is going to produce benefits.

Benefits can be realised as lower lifecycle costs when compared to traditional practices.

Sometimes we still need to remind ourselves that although sustainable technologies and practices might have higher up-front costs to implement, they can generate significant savings over time.

This requires a comprehensive assessment of costs through the life of a project to fully capture the potential benefits of sustainable best practices. There are real savings being realised on many fronts including financial, resource and environmental – and airports continue to prove this over time.

Looking to the horizon, beyond monetary cost savings, sustainable practices and resiliency planning will reduce an airports’ overall environmental footprint, ultimately benefiting its customers, stakeholders, and local community, and the global aviation industry.

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IT INNOVATION

All about data New technology continues to provide airports with new sources of data about passenger behaviours than can be used to improve operational efficiency and boost revenues, writes Tony Chapman.

Y

ou’re rushing to the airport to catch a flight when the service you’ve subscribed to sends a text message. It’s letting you know there’s an accident ahead and provides an alternate route.

It also lets you know that the parking garage you typically use is just about full and offers some other options. Because of the updates, you make it to the airport in time, jump on your flight and off you go.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? While it may not be available today at your local airport, this type of solution, and others like it, are generating a lot of interest in the aviation community.

These technologies are part of a new set of solutions that focus on traffic, queue and flow management to enhance the passenger experience, optimise operations and improve revenue by using data to better understand passenger behaviour before getting to – and once at – the airport.

Unlike passenger facilitation solutions that enable travellers to go through security, check-in, drop bags, etc, as quickly and as efficiently as possible, passenger behaviour technologies focus on what passengers do in between those events.

Ultimately, the goal is to get a better understanding of passenger behaviour from the time they leave their home to how a passenger transits through the airport by using analytics.

Airports want to know specifically where passengers go, where they queue, where they dwell, and more about their dining and shopping preferences.

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NEW TECHNOLOGIES PROVIDE NEW CAPABILITIES

Tracking and flow management solutions have existed for some time, but technological limitations have slowed adoption. However, that’s changing. The per cent of devices that can be tracked using Bluetooth, for example, is actually very low, so previous solutions did not provide as much value. But new capabilities, like indoor satellite and advanced sensor networks, are removing limitations and making these solutions more useful for airports, and passengers, alike.

And the value does not need to come from tracking an individual but rather from understanding the general behaviour a person exhibits. For example, airports want to know that Person A was in security for 10 minutes, then stopped at a certain shop and then headed to the gate 45 minutes before departure.

At some point in the future, airports may be able to identify an individual, but that’s likely to be subject to personal approval to opt in to a service, which will provide the passenger with a personalised service and other unique benefits, similar to the way a person may give up some of his or her privacy when using Google.

OPTIMISING OPERATIONS

Technologies that measure traffic in real time, reporting volume, speed, lane occupancy, queue length and other information are very useful to an airport as well as to arriving and/ or departing passengers.

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IT INNOVATION

Systems that are continuously updated with the actual behaviour of passengers enable airports to proactively address issues.

Inside the terminal, effective people flow management is critical to an airport’s core business. Extensive video systems, neural networks coupled with artificial intelligence and deep learning techniques and other technologies, enable airports to get real-time measurements and analytics of passenger behaviour, predicted wait times, ongoing throughput levels and lane opening data, for example.

If predicted queue times at security are increasing, the head of security might receive a message to open a new line – eliminating issues before they become problems and increasing passenger satisfaction.

UNDERSTANDING PASSENGER ANALYTICS

Understanding where passengers dwell can provide unique insight for infrastructure decisions and also help maximise revenue.

Understanding why people tend to congregate in this area versus that can

impact how an airport designs, redesigns or builds new infrastructure.

How can it impact revenue? If an airport knows where its passengers dwell, it could, for example, charge different retail rates for different areas based on passenger behaviour.

Likewise, an airport could control the content on its digital signage to determine the best placement for product advertising.

It could mix and match advertising and track it so it can bill based on the demographics and the number of people who see it.

COMBINING DATA CREATES POWERFUL INSIGHTS FOR AIRPORTS

While airports globally are looking at implementing a number of these solutions, the biggest value will come from integrating passenger analytical data with the operational data captured from existing airport systems, like Rockwell Collins’ ARINC airport operations, passenger processing and self-service systems.

This integration would provide a much more comprehensive data set and enable airports to understand every aspect of its www.aci-apa.com

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IT INNOVATION passengers’ behaviour. Most importantly, the data could be used to optimise operations and provide the services and facilities that it believes its customer wants.

And what if systems outside and inside the airport could be integrated? Take the example of an airport that bases its number of security screeners on expected passenger arrival rates and suddenly it’s not seeing those people? Real time data feeds, to an integrated system, could identify the issue as a traffic accident that’s delayed travellers, and just knowing when things were likely to clear up would enable the airport to adjust its staffing and/or add more self-service systems in real time to handle the peak passenger load when it arrives.

And this integration could provide airports with even more insight. What if we could tell an airport if Airline A’s passengers behave differently from Airline B’s? Or if passengers behave APA Issue 2, 2017

differently in the evening than they do in the morning?

Using this data could impact the design and planning of airport infrastructure to best accommodate actual passenger behaviour.

In the future, airports will be well served by looking at IT solutions that provide fully automated ways of understanding what passengers are doing throughout their journeys, from the moment they leave home until they board the plane.

Ultimately, understanding and using passenger behaviour data and integrating it with operational data will be the key to unlocking the airport of the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tony Chapman is a senior director of product management and strategic programs for Rockwell Collins, a leading provider of airport solutions globally.

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IT INNOVATION

Intelligent solutions What’s the latest in the world of airport IT? Joe Bates reports back from the recent Air Transport IT Summit.

F

irst there was ‘virtual reality’, then we were introduced to ‘augmented reality’ and now we could potentially have ‘mixed reality’ at airports if new HoloLens technology currently being trialled

by SITA comes to the market.

Initial trials of the HoloLens at Helsinki Airport apparently went well and, according to SITA, a new world is beginning to emerge where operators can use the technology to analyse and manage airport operations in a mixed reality environment.

Explaining the new technology, Jim Peters, SITA’s chief technology officer and head of SITA Lab, enthused: “Mixed Reality hits a sweet spot of having an experience that is fully immersive for the user, but unlike virtual reality also keeps that person in the real world.

“The user can interact with both and avoids the disorientation or discomfort of fully immersive virtual reality. There are benefits to having multiple people using the headset and simultaneously interacting with the same virtual display.

This could be really useful for scenario planning exercises.”

In effect, HoloLens is the world’s first self-contained holographic computer that enables users to engage with digital content and interact with holograms in the world around them.

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SITA believes that this new way of looking at the world can provide new insights into how the airport is functioning.

And HoloLens also opens the possibility of being able to access the AOCC environment from any location, on or offsite, allowing experts to provide input to situations remotely.

Peters added: “Mixed reality, which combines augmented and virtual reality, is more than a new interface, it is a new way of looking at the world and allows things to be done in a new way.

“It enables digital and physical data to exist together. Our early research shows that there are potential uses for airlines and airports – for operations, maintenance and training.

“We need to learn how to interact in this new environment. In the same way that we moved from computers to smartphones and voice recognition, now we can go beyond the screen.”

The SITA Lab project interfaced into multiple data sources at Helsinki Airport to create the unique view of the ever-changing operations throughout the day. This included passenger real-time location and historic density data; aircraft position data; gate information; flight status information; security wait times and retail dwell times, segmented by passenger.

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Another new innovation seen for the first time at the Air Transport IT Summit were SITA’s new robotic check-in kiosks that can move themselves around the airport to find customers.

SITA believes that the intelligent kiosks, called KATE, will help reduce queues at airports by autonomously moving to busy or congested areas ensuring that queues quickly disappear.

And the good news is that it uses existing SITA data systems and can also communicate through a Cloud service to ensure that the right number of kiosks are at the right position when needed, which SITA assures makes them highly responsive to changes in the airport.

The cutting-edge robotic kiosk makes use of geo-location technology to find its way through the airport. This, says SITA, allows the kiosk to move around freely across the airport terminal, using obstacle avoidance technology to avoid bumping into people or things.

KATE and her fellow robotic kiosks will automatically return to their docking stations when they are low on power or need to be resupplied with boarding passes or bag tags.

As for the conference section of this year’s summit, airports were most strongly represented in a session about ‘Transformational technology leadership’, with ACI Europe’s director general, Olivier Jankovec, and Groupe ADP’s chief information officer, Gilles Lévéque, taking centre stage.

Jankovec said that transformational technology leadership at airports was being driven by a number of different factors, most notably by changing airport business models that have seen airports evolve from “being infrastructure providers to fully fledged and diversified businesses”.

He called technology “a great and positive enabler for airports”, noting that it has allowed airports to enhance the passenger experience and improve operational efficiency communication with passengers.

“IT has allowed us to maximise revenues, cut costs and squeeze our assets,” said Jankovec. “It has also aided communication with passengers through social media and other digital channels.”

Indeed, ACI Europe’s latest ‘Digital Report’ revealed that there are around 50 airport branded apps covering 164 airports across the continent.

However, Jankovec admitted that there was also a downside to IT innovation, revealing that online shopping, for example, posed very real challenges to the established business models of airports.

He said: “In the past, it was given that non-aeronautical commercial revenues would systematically over perform aeronautical revenues. However, this hasn’t been the case in Europe since 2013 and this is a bit of a wake-up call because our business models are typically predicated on our ability to APA continue to grow commercial revenues.” www.aci-apa.com

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SECTION WBP NEWS TITLE

WORLD BUSINESS PARTNERS

IN THE SPOTLIGHT WBP PROFILES

NEW BIOMETRICS BORDER CONTROL SOLUTION FOR JAKARTA GATEWAY Soerkarno-Hatta International Airport’s new Terminal 3 boasts an advanced Automated Border Control (ABC) system provided by the Indonesian Direktorat Jenderal Imigrasi PT Jaya Teknik Indonesia and Vision-Box. The Vision-Box state-of-the-art biometric border control solution consists of 32 vb i-match ABC eGates for eligible Indonesian nationals, self-service border clearance and 10 vb e-pass portable biometric suitcases for enhanced mobility in passenger clearance.

Additionally, it includes 32 individual fingerprint and passport scanners to expedite the processing of foreign travellers at manual counters.

According to Vision-Box, the integrated ABC solution provides higher accuracy in passenger identity verification at the border, while increasing airport security and passenger processing capacity.

Jean-François Lennon, vice president for global business development and sales at Vision-Box, says: “This next-generation border control solution is designed to provide the airport, travellers and border control authority with a modern, secure, hassle-free solution, and improve efficiency and airport capacity.

“Our platform unleashes all the benefits of an innovative self-service immigration clearing process, supporting the future growth in passenger traffic. It adds capacity to the airport’s infrastructure without the need to expand its architecture footprint, thus providing a flexible solution for airport stakeholders during peak seasons and times.

“We are delighted to have been selected to deliver this digital transformation programme for the Indonesian border, in collaboration with PT Jaya Teknik, our local partner.”

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