Is a $1.5 trillion investment worth it?
In 2021, airports globally invested a substantial $89 billion to enhance or expand their passenger terminals, which equates to 59% of the total airport infrastructure investment (Airport technology). This highlights a predominant objective: meeting the modern passengers’ demand for a seamless curb-to-gate experience.
IATA projects airports will be spending a huge $1.2 to $1.5 trillion on passenger terminal infrastructure by 2030.
Yet, many airports still struggle to identify exactly where to spend the money that will significantly improve passenger experience. Moreover, evaluating the actual improvement in passenger experience and quantifying its significance remains a challenge.
The pitfalls of miscalculated investments
- Over-investment: Incur more operational costs for a marginally improved passenger experience from excessive and underutilized infrastructure.
- Under-investment: Fail to satisfy passengers from underperforming service levels and inadequate infrastructure.
The complexity of terminal investment
Airport infrastructure investments usually rely on strict, predefined parameters, ensuring clear and straightforward decisions. However, passenger terminals present a unique challenge. Their performance is a hard-to-quantify “passenger experience.”
With millions of different passenger experience projects running at the same time, it’s hard to understand what is working and not working. Airports are left with uncertainty on:
- If passengers are satisfied.
- Where and why they are not satisfied.
- Where and how to enhance the experience.
LoS framework unlocks investment confidence
To navigate this challenge and quantify passenger satisfaction, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) introduced the Level of Service (LoS) framework. It’s a performance framework that lets you focus your dollars on where it matters most.
By quantifying the passenger experience in 3 categories, over-designed, optimal, and under-provisioned (sub-optimal), airports can pinpoint where they are delivering better passenger service than their peers, and where they need to invest more.
Using LoS framework, airports can invest the right amount in the right place. Central to the LoS framework is the analysis of space utilization and queuing durations.
Why queueing determines terminal performance
Why consider queueing durations in measuring the terminal capacity? Passenger wait time significantly influences their overall perception of the airport experience. In fact, short wait time also increases non-aeronautical revenue of the airport.
IATA utilized extensive passenger surveys to determine perceived optimal waiting times, thereby shaping the criteria for the three performance levels for each terminal sub-system.
Benefits of using LoS framework
Through the LoS framework, airport authorities can:
- Optimize operational efficiency: Benchmark terminal operations, ensuring optimal passenger wait times and resource allocation.
- Ensure strategic investments: Align CAPEX and OPEX to prevent under/over-investment and to ensure infrastructure readiness for future growth.
- Drive data-informed decisions: Utilize key performance indicators and historical trends to justify operational decisions and accurately forecast staffing needs.
Zensors’s solution: Daily queue LoS report
Any airport can easily adopt IATA's LoS framework with Zensors' daily queue LoS report. It's tailored to offer actionable insights to airport operators. Delivered daily to stakeholders' inboxes, this tool provides a convenient and practical approach to understanding and enhancing terminal performance.
Why choose Zensors' daily queue LoS report?
- Direct & daily delivery: Directly sent to the inboxes of key stakeholders, our reports ensure consistent monitoring and easy access, at a glance.
- Intuitive visualizations: Grasp your passenger terminal's performance with data categorized into optimal, suboptimal, and underperforming segments.
- Industry-standard benchmarking: Align your terminal operations with the best, adhering to IATA's framework standards with our reports.
Real client applications
The LoS report isn't just a concept; it's actively transforming how our clients operate. Through the experiences of our fictional character, Bob Richards, Operational Director at Zensors Airport, we'll showcase how the report is utilized daily.
Bob recognized:
- Dissatisfaction in Terminal 2 due to long waiting times and inefficient queues.
- Negative impacts on overall traveler experience.
- A worrying decline in non-aeronautical revenue.
However, the integration of LoS reports led to significant changes. Let's see what monthly and daily work looked like before and after for Bob.
Monthly strategic planning and review
Before LoS:
- Relied on anecdotal feedback and estimates for decision-making.
- Misallocated resources, often over-investing in non-critical areas or neglecting essential ones.
After LoS:
- Eliminated guesswork with precise data.
- Formulated data-driven strategies and plans to enhance queue efficiency.
- Improved investment decisions, making them more informed and effective.
Daily operational oversight
Before LoS:
- Learned about operational hiccups long after occurrence.
- Struggled to identify root causes.
- Faced challenges in learning from past mistakes.
After LoS:
- Received daily queue LoS report for immediate next-day adjustments.
- Recognized efficient management from quick queue reductions.
- Analyzed prolonged queues with timestamped CCTV footage.
Dive into its workings for yourself with our sample LoS report below.
How to schedule a daily queue LoS report
Any Zensors platform users can easily get a daily queue LoS report to enable data-driven queue operations. Follow the steps below:
1. In your Zensors platform, navigate to report tab.
2. Then click into your Daily level of service report
3. In the upper right, click schedule report
- Name your new schedule, and select options under report options
- Location: Select location where you want to understand performance.
- Time: which day you want to measure service performance.
4. In the scheduling page, click into Create new schedule
5. Then, choose your delivery options
- Delivery method: Where you want to send the report to
- Recipient: Choose user / user group to send report to
- Frequency: What time of the day you want to send report
6. Finally, review & save your schedule to complete the report schedule process!
Contact support if you need any help. Start using queue LoS report today and make your airport cost-efficient. Don’t have Zensors queue management solution yet? Talk to our AI experts.
Download your sample LoS report now
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