The challenge
Recovering from the impact of the COVID pandemic, a small UK airport was expecting a steep rise in passenger volumes.
To ensure the airport was well equipped to handle short-term increases and in preparation for projected continued growth, o&i consulting was asked to map the core terminal processes, assess resource utilisation and identify opportunities to improve efficiency and maximise use of existing facilities.
Our role
With a particular focus on check-in, passenger security and boarding, the o&i team developed a detailed understanding of current operations. We spent time observing and measuring key elements of the passenger journey, interviewed operations team members and analysed a range of relevant current and historical data.
Working with the security team, we explored opportunities to streamline the existing process, including testing revised layouts and passenger flows, and refining communications to influence passenger behaviour. As part of our analysis, our team tracked resource requirements against passenger arrival profiles to determine whether capacity and demand were aligned. We also looked at how ground handling resource responsibilities could be adapted to make more effective use of agent time.
Our study identified several immediate gains, including:
check-in: introducing demand-driven planning to better match capacity allocation with passenger arrivals
security: process improvements that would deliver resourcing efficiencies; layout optimisation to improve passenger flow; signage improvement to improve passenger preparation for security processes
boarding: changes to gate team responsibilities to improve resource utilisation
We also provided advice on how the airport could achieve further efficiencies as the operation grows, including resource planning and the phased introduction of automated solutions.
The Outcome
The study provided the airport operator with a set of actions to achieve its objectives.
A number of the recommendations we provided were quick win efficiencies that were implemented in time for the forthcoming summer peak.
