The Evolving Airline Industry: Impacts on Airports
3.4 Implications for Practice
TABLE3.3 Some National Differences in Decision Makers and Performance Criteria
various sites in specific industries. The objective is to identify the sites that perform best in various categories. These then becomes a benchmarks, that is, standards for the rest of the industry. Benchmarking can identify sites that perform better than others overall and that might be taken as models. It can also identify sites that perform poorly overall, and that might need management attention. However, these individual measures of performance are difficult to translate into any internationally meaningful overall measure of performance.
Any weighting of the categories represents notions of relative value that will not represent the priorities of all countries.
The fact that technical solutions depend on social values means that global organizations should be careful about how they transfer practices from one region to another. The exper-ience of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AAS) illustrates the issue. In the late 1990s, AAS committed to design, construct, and operate an international passenger building at New York/Kennedy. They brought with them their excellent reputation and expertise from run-ning an attractive facility at Amsterdam. They proceeded to design the New York facility along the same lines as Amsterdam. In particular, they planned to cater to the variety of foreign airlines that each had a relatively small presence at New York/Kennedy. However, AAS apparently did not understand the power of airlines in the United States to make their own arrangements. In Europe, airlines rarely have much influence on the design of passen-ger buildings. In the case of New York/Kennedy, airlines disrupted the plans of AAS in two ways. First, significant airlines left the International facility, either to a new building they built themselves (as Air France and its associates did in Terminal One) or to the buildings operated by their alliance partners, such as American Airlines. This phase left AAS with a big investment and insufficient tenants. Second, Delta Air Lines then agreed to take over much of the AAS building, provided it was redesigned. Delta wanted a standard U.S. con-figuration, favoring transfer operations and placing commercial activities near the depar-ture gates, beyond security—exactly opposite to normal practice in Amsterdam. In short, AAS suffered when they tried to transfer excellent Dutch practice to New York. The case illustrates how the dependence of technical solutions on social values means that airport operators need to be careful how they import “best practices” from other countries.
Specific Implications
The differences in decision-making processes and criteria of performance translate into specific differences in how airport operators develop their facilities different countries.
These concern the following:
• Artifacts—what they construct
• Type of service—the features they stress
• Operations—how they manage their properties
This section mentions some salient examples. Later chapters explore details.
In the United States, stakeholders in airport operations participate extensively in the decision-making process. The result is that the design of the airport reflects their concerns.
For example, airlines like to minimize the time their aircraft have to taxi. AsChap. 14 ex-plains, efficient designs can save the airlines hundreds of millions of dollars a year. There-fore, when airlines have a strong voice in the design of airports, as they do in the United States, they insist on designs that facilitate easy movement. These stagger the runways, so that landings end and takeoffs start near the passenger buildings. They also pave over large areas and thus eliminate restrictive taxiways that require aircraft to make many turns. For example, U.S. airport operators typically pave over the entire space between finger piers.
Elsewhere, at Amsterdam/Schiphol, for example, large portions of this space may be left unpaved or are set aside for lights and is otherwise unavailable for aircraft maneuvers. The comparison of Atlanta and Kuala Lumpur/International illustrates this phenomenon. Both airports feature parallel runways on either side of passenger buildings. However, the paths the aircraft follow are much more direct and operationally less expensive at Atlanta (Figs.
3.5and3.6).
FIGURE3.5 Typical U.S. apron layout in front of midfield passenger building: aircraft can access gate with a minimum of turns. (Source: Atlanta/Hartsfield Airport.)
FIGURE 3.6 Taxiway layouts at Kuala Lumpur/International: aircraft require many turns to access gates. (Source: AeroStratos Pte Ltd, Singapore.)
Similarly, airport operators in the United States tend to cater to the individual desires of passengers. Specifically, they provide extensive parking facilities at affordable prices and promote easy access for automobiles. This conveniently enables individuals to proceed from home to airport directly door to door. In countries with centralized decision making, however, airport operators favor collective means of airport access (see Coogan, 2008).
They channel travelers into patterns that require combinations of travel by taxis and trains, which are inherently less convenient for individuals although they may be beneficial to the area as a whole. SeeChap. 17on airport access.
National differences in the concepts of excellence also influence the types of service air-ports offer. The French emphasis on technical excellence, for example, leads them to devel-op state-of-the-art innovations. The way they have integrated their high-speed rail system, the TGV, into Paris/de Gaulle and Lyon airports illustrates this phenomenon. Moreover, the existence of the TGV itself demonstrates the power of the central government to impose technical excellence for the national cause of public transport. The managing technical elite considers the airports to be an opportunity to develop and showcase all kinds of innova-tions. These have included unique developments such as variable-speed moving sidewalks, baggage belts lifting vertically through several stories, and check-in facilities after passen-ger control. They deliberately seek to place themselves in the role of technological leaders.
In Britain, the emphasis is on economy and return on investment. Naturally, this leads to less service and elegance. A popular British author described Terminal 4 at London/Heath-row in the following terms:
Long, slow-moving lines stretch from the check-in desks nearly to the opposite wall of the concourse, crosshatched by two longer lines converging upon the narrow gate that leads to Passport Control, the Security gates, and the Departures Lounge. The queuing passengers shift their weight from one foot to another, or lean on the handles of their heaped baggage trolleys, or squat on the suitcases…[He looks] up at the low, steel-gray ceiling, where all the buildings’ ducts and conduits are exposed…which makes [him] feel as if he is working in a hotel basement or the engine-room of a battle-ship.
(Lodge, 1992, p. 3)
Centralized decision making also leads to operational procedures quite different from those prevailing in regions where decision-making power is distributed. In this respect, practice in the North American half of the airports market contrasts with that in the rest of the world. In Europe, Japan, and elsewhere, planning processes are directive and indicate what will happen. In the United States, on the other hand, plans are merely suggestive, as Chap. 4 indicates. As Chap. 12 indicates, operators of busy European and Asian airports typically manage their airspace through formal allocations of the “slots” for aircraft arrivals and departures. They also frequently charge high minimum fees on aircraft operations to discourage or effectively ban smaller aircraft from the congested airports. Such procedures are rare in North America. The airlines and operators of small aircraft have rights to oper-ate pretty much when they choose, just as drivers are free to get in their cars and drive.
The pluralistic nature of the United States is evident throughout the operation of the air-port itself. In North America, it is usual to have dozens of independent contractors
man-aging various bits of the airport. Airlines typically handle their own baggage and check-in operations, often even their own passenger buildcheck-ings. Competitive national corporations routinely manage the parking facilities, often several at the same airport. Independent con-tractors usually do the cleaning and operate security. Architecture and engineering firms carry out the design and construction management for the airport. In practice, most U.S.
airports are highly privatized in that private companies run most of their operations. The situation has been vastly different in the rest of the world. The pattern elsewhere has been that the airport operator has provided all services. In Europe, antimonopoly directives now require airports in the European Community to permit competitive services, but the major airports typically offer and provide the whole range of operational services. A comparis-on between Bostcomparis-on/Logan and Frankfurt/Internaticomparis-onal illustrates the difference. Both air-ports are about the same size and have around 15,000 to 17,000 workers on the airport. At Frankfurt/International, most of these employees work for the airport operator, whereas at Boston/Logan, only about 800 work for Massport.Table 3.4summarizes the range of these particular distinctions.
TABLE3.4 Some Distinctions in Airport Planning and Design between North America and the Rest of the World
Exercises
3.1. For some airport of interest to you, use the web and other references to identify the