Airport-wide Flow Management: An interview with James Williamson
Numerous airports – including Cincinnati, Amsterdam, Bristol, Birmingham and Keflavik – have shifted from single-process queue measurement to airport-wide flow management, to help improve resourcing, expansion planning and prevent bottlenecks. We caught up with James Williamson, CEO of Veovo, who explains the benefits of seamless passenger insights.
How does airport-wide flow management differ from traditional capacity and resourcing methods?
Traditionally, airports have focused on specific areas to evaluate efficiency and improve capacity. For instance, measuring wait times at security checkpoints to try and adjust resourcing to improve throughput. However, measuring and reacting to a single bottleneck doesn’t explain why it is happening, or the impact of those decisions on the entire airport experience.
Flow management is designed to help answer these questions – and find solutions – by using a combination of location analysis for real-world data and engagement data to understand experience and behaviours. Thus, we can understand the airport as a complete, interdependent organism.
Why are leading airports shifting to airport-wide flow management?
With fluctuating passenger numbers, airports are under pressure to either expand their physical resources or make much better use of existing capacity. From a practical standpoint, improving efficiencies and optimising asset usage is not only the more straightforward option but also the more cost- and time-effective option.
Effective optimisation, however, relies on a thorough understanding of the entire airport’s flow, for both passengers and aircraft. We have been moving away from a siloed approach to management for several years now, and we are seeing the benefits of integrated thinking.
What benefits will airports experience, both immediate and long-term, by implementing this type of system?
Once you know, you can act in confidence. For busy airports, that makes all the difference, as even the best plans can be derailed in an instant. Delays, weather, traffic, late show-ups, security events – the daily variables are complex.
Upon implementation, the airport gains situational awareness throughout the terminal, and real data to drive improvements. Detailed passenger occupancy, dwell, and movement insights help them to understand how passengers move and use the airport, and how processes influence each other. This, in turn, allows them to make smarter decisions to implement efficiency improvements – from optimising gate allocation to re-thinking and improving airport experiences – while limiting bottlenecks and overcrowding.
Implementing an airport-wide solution has shown us that passenger flow and behaviours can differ significantly depending on airline, time of day, class of travel and destination, leading to differing in-terminal impacts. Taking a flow management approach provides accurate and detailed passenger behaviour profiles that we can use with machine learning and artificial intelligence to produce dynamic and accurate passenger forecasts. With better forecasting, airports can make smarter decisions and plan expansions and upgrades. They will even be able to manage passenger experiences more effectively.
How does flow management improve service quality?
More efficient operations mean less time waiting in queues – one of the things passengers most often complain about. Besides reducing queue wait times and offering stress-reducing wait-time displays, improved efficiency results in better service to partners like airlines, taxi and shuttle bus services and concessions. Our passenger flow solutions are helping ensure on-time departures, better retail planning and smarter use of airport resources.
Capacity constraints are on everyone’s minds and are a prevalent issue globally. How does flow management help address these constraints?
The power of flow management is through enabling smarter decisions about the use of resources – whether it be baggage belts, gates, check-in desks, lanes or staff – to make the best use of capacity to match passenger demand. We use real data collected from flow management to improve resource management and resource allocation. By having accurate demand data across the airport, we can help optimise capacity for the best effect.
“With Veovo, We gain critical insight on passenger flow at our facility, which we share on a multitude of communication platforms.”
“Veovo was chosen after a comprehensive selection procedure. Its ability to accurately aggregate multiple data sources and automate the delivery of accurate forecasts stood out as a clear point of difference.”
“The Veovo solution helps us manage passenger expectations better, making for a more pleasant travel experience.”
“Veovo’s technology gives us complete passenger flow visibility, helping us make informed decisions to deliver a better-quality passenger experience.“
“Veovo’s cloud solution helps make our business more resilient by allowing us to accurately measure passenger flow so that we can respond quickly and efficiently to any changes.”
“Veovo has translated our complex passenger flow process into numbers. It helped the organization in finding insights and enhanced passenger experience in our terminal.“
“Veovo’s live re-forecasting capabilities provide us with an early heads-up on changes to passenger presentation profiles. This allows us to easily adapt plans and rosters to reflect the current situation, improving journeys and keeping costs down.”
“Veovo helps us manage performance with data-driven certainty. With real-time visibility of passenger flow, we can keep pinch-point processing quick and make holistic decisions on creating more efficient and meaningful customer experiences throughout the airport.”
“Veovo has allowed us to understand the security check-point dynamics, and most importantly, our customers benefit directly by getting a better service.”
“We can keep our passengers fully informed 24/7 about what to expect at security. Our aim is to make the experience as smooth as possible – Veovo helps us do that.”
