Challenge
An airport is a diverse and and extremely complicated organizational business complex.
Many separate companies, authorities and organisations - although in some cases in
competition with each other - have to work together. The prime task is to offer its
customers attractive facilities and services to cover their needs.
The customers of an airport are: passengers, airlines, flight operators, customs, agents, etc.
The major aims are to ensure smooth passenger flow, to handle aircraft on time and to ensure
overall security. The services are: providing and maintenance of buildings and
infrastructure, co-ordination of all users.
The organisations involved have to work together closely and smoothly in order to
achieve high standards of service.
These include:
Handling of aircraft
Control of passenger flow
Sorting and transportation of baggage
Storage and distribution of freight
Modern airports have to solve the following particular difficulties:
a) Daily flight operations are exposed to extreme fluctuations (delays, cancellations)
b) Other imponderables are weather conditions and technical problems
c) Systems must have high availability 24 hours a day and 7 days per week
d) Event-related communication is indispensable to ensure efficient handling
Is the airport a hub, entailed out-of-the-ordinary requirements and more complex
processes are the result. Large airports are always in competition with
the "guaranteed minimum connecting time", which is - as an example - 35 minutes at Munich Airport.
At airports, handling processes cannot be planned exactly in advance or influenced
as in industrial logistics. No matter what events occur - these processes, which
affect thousands of passengers and the people coming to pick them up, must be mastered by
permanent change management.