The Evolving Airline Industry: Impacts on Airports
3.2 Some Physical Differences
Some obvious physical differences in the design and operation of airports across the world motivate the discussion in this chapter. These illustrate how some seemingly tangential so-cial assumptions and practices can have important consequences in terms of airport design, cost, and efficiency. They provide tangible evidence of the social construction of techno-logy, the way cultural assumptions shape the seemingly technical solutions to design prob-lems. These examples indicate how this phenomenon occurs regarding governmental and managerial practices. Readers can easily verify these examples visually by looking at dif-ferent sites.
Check-in Facilities
A passenger approaching a check-in counter in North America will normally encounter an agent standing in an open passageway running between the counter and the parallel bag-gage conveyor belt. During the check-in process, this agent and others are likely to move up and down the passageway as they sort out issues with colleagues. Finally, somebody will pick up the passenger’s bags and place them on the conveyor (Fig. 3.1). This is the normal practice met by about half the airline travelers in the world.
FIGURE3.1 Typical U.S. check-in arrangement: agents stand and move bags. (Source: Ben Mutzabaugh, USA Today.)
In much of Europe and elsewhere, by contrast, passengers checking-in will typically meet an agent sitting down. The agent will not lift the bags. These will move on a small belt between the passenger and the main baggage conveyor belt. These small belts serving each agent cut across the space behind the check-in counters and effectively prevent agents from moving directly to other colleagues along the check-in desks (Fig. 3.2). This arrange-ment is the alternative standard for check-in facilities.
FIGURE 3.2 Typical European check-in arrangement: agents sit and do not lift bags.
(Source: Munich Airport.)
Both approaches represent “best practice” in their own context. On the face of it, the North American arrangement is more cost-effective. It requires less equipment and permits agents to move around efficiently as needed. The European pattern, however, conforms to their concept of a humane work environment. Clerks and agents are entitled to sit down on the job, whether they work in airports or super markets. This social norm is widely estab-lished and unlikely to change in the near future. What people think of as the best solution is not a purely technical matter; the judgment rests on social and cultural assumptions.
The issue for designers arises when it comes to designing check-in facilities outside North America or Western Europe. Which tradition should they adopt? This is not merely a technical choice; it is a social judgment.
Aircraft Contact Stands
Aircraft “contact” stands are those that close to the passenger buildings. They contrast with the “remote” stands far from the buildings. Passengers normally board aircraft at contact stands through some kind of permanent aerobridge. To get on aircraft parked remotely, they must take some kind of bus.
The design of contact stands and the passenger building differs fundamentally between North America and Europe. Specifically, the connections between the passenger building and the aircraft tend to be very different. In America, the usual arrangement is that aircraft in the contact stands are right next to the passenger building. The aircraft nose may be as close as 10 m, asFig. 3.3 indicates. In this arrangement, the telescopic, movable aero-bridges connect directly between the passenger building and the aircraft.2
FIGURE 3.3 Aircraft connecting directly to passenger building. (Source: Aeroporto de Congonhas.)
In Europe, however, aircraft at the “contact” stands typically park relatively far from the passenger building. The nose of the aircraft may easily be 25 to 40 m away. The system of aerobridges can correspondingly be up to 70 m long. Airport operators in Europe, and in many countries worldwide, expect that vehicles operating on the airfield will normally not intersect the paths of aircraft. Ground vehicles will circulate on two-lane roads laid out at the face of each passenger building. Moreover, the design will typically provide parking spaces between this roadway and the building. Consequently, aircraft gates in airport build-ings in Europe feature both 15- to 20-m bridges for passengers to cross over the road and substantial piers that support these bridges and connect with the movable aerobridges. The view inFig. 3.4illustrates this pattern.
FIGURE 3.4 Typical European contact position: long distance between building and air-craft featuring a long bridge over road and parking spaces. (Source: London/Heathrow ter-minal 5.)
The difference in design of the contact stands can have enormous implications for their cost and the efficient use of extremely valuable airfield space. The European design most obviously requires a much greater investment for each gate, because of the cost of the fixed bridge over the roadway and the pier to support it. Moreover, this additional construction is only a fraction of the added expense. The greater cost comes from the inefficient use of space and the extra cost of making the passenger buildings longer.Example 3.1 illustrates the different implications of the two approaches to designing contact stands for aircraft.
What accounts for this expensive difference in practice? Simply put, Americans expect that the drivers of apron vehicles will drive safely and coordinate their movements with the control tower as necessary. The rate of accidents between aircraft and vehicles driving on the apron appears to be close to zero and is not an issue of real concern. European and other airport operators also daily transport thousands of passengers across aircraft taxiways to re-mote stands, as they do at Paris/de Gaulle, Milan/Linate and Lisbon, and other airports that use remote parking. Yet European and other operators insist on having separate roadways for apron vehicles. Apparently, they do not have confidence in their employees or control systems. In general terms, this major design difference is another example of the way that social attitudes and assumptions shape technology.
Example 3.1 Effect of Different Standards for Aircraft Contact Stands Consider a passenger building with six fin-ger piers, such as has existed at Miami/International and Amsterdam/Schiphol.
The practice of laying out roadways on both sides widens the effective width of each pier by about 40 m, com-pared to the North American practice. Applying this standard to six finger piers lengthens the complex by about
240 m. This arrangement makes the central building connecting the piers much longer. It increases walking dis-tances. It makes the building more expensive. The cost of passenger buildings can easily be $2000/m2. If the main passenger building is 25 m wide and has two floors, the extra cost of the complex due to the 240-m extension is about $24 million in construction costs—to which must be added operating costs, including cleaning, climate con-trol, and maintenance.
An arrangement with roadways in front of the building also limits the capacity of the airfield apron. The width required for each finger pier with roadways is 40 m. Assuming that aircraft are about 70 m long and taxiways are 80 m wide, as for a Boeing 747 or an Airbus 380, the total width for a finger pier with roadways is about 300 m. That is about 15 percent more space per aircraft than for a finger pier without roadways. This corresponding capacity reduction of around 15 percent may be critical at some airports.
Table 3.1summarizes the specific differences in design practice these cases demonstrate.
As these examples suggest, differences in national or regional practices can have signific-ant consequences on both land-side and air-side operations. The examples are tangible in-stances of a general phenomenon. As the next sections discuss, the social and cultural dif-ferences between regions also lead to significant difdif-ferences in airport planning objectives, procedures, and criteria. These may fundamentally affect the nature of airport operations in different contexts.
TABLE3.1 Some Physical Differences in Design of Airport Passenger Buildings between United States and Other Traditions