Airport Terminals in a Post-COVID-19 World
BY SIOBHAN BOYLE,
MARKETING MANAGER, VEOVO
Cast your mind back to
February and a typical busy
airport scene – the packed
check-ins; passengers sitting
shoulder-to-shoulder at gate
lounges; jostling crowds at
baggage carousels; hugs and
handshakes at arrival halls.
So much has changed in
such a short time. With the
rapid spread of COVID-19, airport
terminals have gone from
bustling hubs of activity to eerily
empty spaces.
But as the infection peaks
seem to be passing, governments
will be turning their
thoughts to getting the economy
kicking back into gear.
The air transport industry’s
ability to demonstrate that
it can support reasonable social
distancing will be a critical
factor in the pace at which
lockdown rules will be relaxed.
Minding the gap
As economic activity
slowly returns, airports are
hoping that travellers take to
the skies again, and quickly.
But confidence will need to be
earned. With social distancing
being our primary weapon
against COVID-19 for the foreseeable
future, operators face
new-found challenges in keeping
people apart and preventing
terminals from becoming
potential virus breeding
grounds.
Success will, in part, come
down to the airport’s ability to
predict and measure passenger
movement and densities –
when they arrive, where they
dwell and how they choose to
congregate – and using that
knowledge to manage people
flow and distribution.
Timely communication
will be essential for building
community trust. With
their health and safety potentially
on the line, passengers
will want reassurance
that airports are taking the
right measures. How long are
the checkpoint queues? When
were surfaces last sanitised?
Which are the least crowded
areas in which to wait? And
many will want the answers
before putting a foot inside the
terminal.
Machine learning technology
and real-time monitoring
may hold the answers to managing
social distancing and
minimising risks in the new
normal.
Social distancing –
8 AIRPORT VOICE, MAY 2020
terminal wide
Safe passenger separation
management will rely on the
ability of operators to not only
understand passenger density
across the terminal in realtime
but to take pre-emptive
action to prevent crowding.
There are several ways airports
can do this, combining
the best mix of data capture
technology, analytics, and decision
metrics to support their
layout, budget and operational
priorities.
• 3D cameras are ideal
for people counting and understanding
occupancy in queues
and smaller areas such as concessionaire
stores and restaurants.
• For larger areas,
blanket coverage with cameras
is too expensive. The most
cost-effective and accurate approach
to understanding how
people move and dwell is to
adopt a hybrid of various sensor
technologies, including
cameras, people counters and
wifi/BLE sensors.
• Passenger Density
analytics measures the degree
of risk in real-time, derived
from distancing measurements,
crowd movement patterns
and the size of the area
being monitored. Alerts and
automated action can be triggered
if density thresholds are
exceeded.
With this insight, airports
can then make intelligent,
proactive decisions to limit
the number of people congregating
such as redirecting
flow with digital messages,
adjusting call to gate times or
spreading gate and baggage
belt allocations.
Safer, smaller
queues
When people take to the
air again, queues at departure
checkpoints will be inevitable.
What’s less-known is how airports
will enforce social distancing,
without creating endless,
snaking lines.
One way is to cap entry to
checkpoint areas – the fewer
people in, the smaller the
queue. This can be achieved
by linking occupancy measures
with airport screens,
to advise passengers when
lines are of a safe size to enter
the area, and which queue
they should join. Once in the
queue, camera sensors can
measure the average distance
between passengers and generate
alarms if passenger density
thresholds are exceeded,
or automatically redirect and
redistribute passengers to different
lines and checkpoints.
Passenger power
Another way to streamline
arrivals and minimise congestion
is by adopting virtual
queues.
Using this technology, passengers
can pre-book a time
slot for processing, such as
for check-in or security. This
helps prevent passengers from
feeling locked in any area, for
any length of time – giving
them control over their airport
journey.
Time slots can be adjusted
in real-time, based on queue
wait times, changing arrival
patterns, lane productivity
and processing capacity.
While waiting, passengers
have the choice to shop, grab a
drink or wait in less-crowded
areas.
Not only do virtual queue
bookings give passengers
greater peace of mind, but
they can also provide airports
with better forecast data, for
more accurate checkpoint
planning.
A different
operational context
It’s not just the passenger
crowding and flows, which
will need a different approach.
The way airports allocate
gates, baggage carousels
and manage turnarounds,
will need a radically new perspective.
They will need to be
more mindful about how they
distribute gate allocations to
maximise separation, whilst
accommodating the flight volume.
Incoming baggage may
need to be separated, across
multiple belts, or at the very
least, separated from other
flights, arriving at the same
time. Plane turnarounds will
increase to allow for extended
cleaning. These are all piling
on operational and economic
challenges in an environment,
which is already stretched
prior to Covid-19.
One possible solution is to
create close integration between
the airport’s passenger
forecasting and density
management systems, and
resource management system.
This will allow real-time
awareness of the situation
in the terminal, and to allow
the operations team to make
smarter decisions, to balance
operational efficiencies
within the airport.
Moving right along
Before the pandemic, airports
typically relied on experience
and historical data to
get a sense of when passengers
were likely to show up. But
with so many new variables to
contend with – changing flight
schedules, social distancing,
additional health screenings,
more regular cleaning – arrival
and processing guesstimates,
based on last year’s or
even last month’s data, are no
longer relevant.
The only way for airports
to make truly safe and accurate
planning decisions will
be by basing them on real, upto
the-minute information.
Dynamic forecasting software
may have the answer.
It allows airports to take live
schedule data to create accurate
passenger show-up
forecasts for each processing
point. The forecast and capacity
plan is then continually
updated to account for live
situations, such as a predicted
occupancy breach. Accurate
forecasts also enable airports
to plan how to channel passengers
around the concourse to
reduce crowd density.
Keflavik Airport recently
reaped the benefits of live forecasting,
as it was grappling
with a continually changing
flight schedule.
“Dynamic forecasting,
linked to the live flight schedule
and updated with passenger
data, as it became available,
gave us an early heads
up to expected passenger arrivals.
This allowed us to adjust
our plans and rosters
to reflect the current situation,
improving journeys and
lowering costs,” said Hanna
María Hermannsdóttir, Specialist
in operation research
at Isavia.
Embracing the new
order
One thing we can be assured
of – the aftermath of
COVID-19 will see changes to
terminal operations on a scale
far more significant and longlasting
than after 9-11.
On the upside, there’s no
need to wait for new technology
to be invented to help
people maintain healthy distances
in terminals. It is already
here. With bundled ondemand
services, predictive
intelligence, and occupancy
monitoring systems, airports
can be supporting social distancing
within weeks of installation.
By connecting airport staff
to answers and actions, you
not only help get passengers
back in the air sooner – you
can, at the same time, build a
smarter customer experience
platform for the future.