airportNEXT! 2012

Themes

Airport Processes

Moderators: Marcel van Beek (Process Manager Energy Strategy 2020 Amsterdam Airport Schiphol), Gert-Jan Meijer (TNO)

Speakers: Miklos Deri (Büro für MEHR), Farid Tabarki (Studio Zeitgeist), Marcel van Beek (Amsterdam Airport Schiphol)

Sustainability challenge: More customers, processes, capacity, sustainability, etc with less, or different.

The Airport Processes session was introduced by the 3 speakers mentioned above. Thereafter, 3 tables were made and the participants discussed about possible innovations and optimizations under the supervision of a moderator. Most of the tables looked especially at the Schiphol situation.

SUMMARY

Out of the discussion the features of a sustainable, flexible, airport (“Flex-port” or “Fair-port”) arises:

  • For passengers and visitors it feels like a living city: sensitive for anyone using it anywhere
  • Where everything is intelligently tailored to the visitor and where everything switches on and off
  • Where the visitor is expected and desired, and does not have to look for everything and can go anywhere he likes
  • Where it is evident that infrastructure, areas, and means are standby and will only switch on at the right moment.

Some concrete examples of sustainability were discussed in coherence with Schiphol Group’s other core values:

SUSTAINABLE & HOSPITABLE

1] Use only a small amount of the energy that is used nowadays to cool down the terminal building, to create an experience for the passenger where he feels comfortable. The energy could be saved by the big amount of glass and top coat that no longer exists of just glass, but exists of solar reflective panels.

The group believes that arriving passengers actually prefer to not see an airport or airplane as they have just spent hours in the airplane. They would not mind to move towards their car or train by environmental friendly tunnels, as long as these tunnels are clean, and sound and smell pleasant. For example the airports in Zürich.

2] It would be hospitable if the airport could guide passengers in the right direction through “dark” and “light”, i.e. dark areas where passenger handling is closed.

SUSTAINABLE & EFFICIENT

1] All space and assets are activated from a central point in a building, parking place or area, and are based on necessary capacity. The statement “no airplane can be parked at pier D57 if pier D3 is available” indicates the use of capacity from a compact-as-possible process perspective (use of building and area). For this purpose the common use of aircraft aprons and handling material might provide more  efficiency and savings in both PAX, BAX and service floor. In common use of resources, the information sharing plays an important role. Sharing information strengthens the system innovation as it involves many (or all) stakeholders. Consequently, a good starting point could be the identification of shared mission/ambition/interests, involving all stakeholders.

2] The growth and shrinkage of active areas and assets as mentioned before should not happen by sudden changes, but by means of fade-in and fade-out on the basis of decentralized detection of presence, central control of the assets and the possibility of human interference to further optimizing.

3] Many incremental process innovations required for efficiency, for instance in pax, bags, cargo, aircraft ground handling etc.

4] More segmentation of passengers, for instance remote bag drop-off, ‘hot’ pax/bax and risk security.

SUSTAINABLE & INSPIRATIONAL

1] Currently, only a small part of the passengers is interested in sustainability. By involving the passenger in sustainability and communicate in simple language, the passenger will like sustainability and will appreciate himself for choosing the airport.

2] Equip a sustainable pavilion that can be visited physically by passengers at  Schiphol, is part of the new Schiphol tour and is suitable for education. The sustainable pavilion should also be accessible virtually by an App.

SUSTAINABLE & RELIABLE

1] Redundant assets can be the solution for a reliable process: the redundant assets/operations will be used in case of overflow and/or failure. Standby redundant assets/operations are more sustainable and reliable because wear and labor hours are limited and less defects occur. Successful chain management and energy management are required to facilitate shifting to redundant assets/operations and to prevent delay in such shifting.

Interesting was that all groups independently considered the traditional baggage process at the airport outdated and inefficient. Rather, they see their baggage handled as parcels and to hand in their baggage as a parcel from home or some parking lot. Whether parcels are in the same plane as passengers is not important to passengers.

Summary

Summary Green Terminal Building >
Summary Aviation Technology >
Summary Regional Urban Integration >