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FROM KERB TO CLOUD

COLLABORATIVE DECISION-MAKING ACROSS


THE AIRPORT & AIR TRAFFIC PROCESS

WHITEPAPER // TRANSPORT

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION

THE PASSENGER

TERMINAL

AIRSIDE, APRON & EN-ROUTE

CONNECTING TRANSPORT

10

CORE IT PLATFORMS

11

WHAT NEXT?

12

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

13

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INTRODUCTION
Airports are rightly considered critical national assets. They connect the local economy with the global
marketplace and employ a workforce that can number in the thousands. It is therefore hugely important that
these increasingly complex operations evolve and address the challenges they face.
One particular challenge facing the sector is the expected growth in air traffic and the impact this will have on
operations. The industry is embracing the notion of Collaborative Decision Making (CDM), where operators and
stakeholders share relevant data that will enable accurate situational awareness.
To create a Next Generation Airport requires a collaborative operation to ensure maximum efficiency. Terminal
and airside operations must understand the impact of key decisions on the wider functions. To be truly
collaborative, an airport must understand the impact of what is happening out on the apron and maximise
capacity whilst minimising the wider network and environmental impact.
Passenger experience is the great differentiator of the current aviation landscape. Middle Eastern hubs such
as Dubai and Doha, Asian hubs like Changi and European airports such as Oslo and Helsinki are no longer
simply focussing on optimising airport processes. This emphasis on passenger processing is equally applicable
for regional airports as it is for hubs. Airports like Cincinnati and Dublin are ensuring that passengers receive
high quality service to ensure passengers chose them instead of a competitor airport. These airports focus
on providing a differentiated experience, enabled by stakeholder collaboration to deliver better passenger
experience.
This operational platform needs to be fully integrated, open to all stakeholders, and encourage data sharing
not just between airport, airline and ground handlers but the passenger and key stakeholders across the wider
network.
Over the course of this paper we will explore the impact a centralised technology platform will have on 5 critical
areas of success:
The Passenger
Terminal Operations
Airside, Apron & En-Route
Connecting Transport
Core IT Platform

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THE PASSENGER
The Passenger Experience
Collaborative decision making and optimisation is a key area of focus for the industry. European airports are
already embracing EUROCONTROLs Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) initiative. A-CDM provides
better communication between airport stakeholders involved in the turnaround process. However, there is no
value in optimising turnaround if we cant get passengers to the gate on time. This gap can be closed with what
we now refer to as Terminal CDM (T-CDM).
T-CDM is critical for airports that aim to focus on delivering a positive passenger experience. With this passengercentric view of the airport process in mind, operators are placing the capture of data, benchmarking and
measurement of KPIs as priority number one. With so many different options available to travellers; whether
its choosing a specific airline, transit airport or method of travel, ensuring that they enjoy your service is vital to
maintain competitiveness. By putting passengers at the heart of your operations you will be able to drive growth
in both passenger numbers and route development.
Passenger Process Optimisation Tools
To support the drive to make the passenger more central to the airport operation and decision making process,
airports must access real-time information. There is no benefit in measuring specific passenger and stakeholder
processes if the information cannot be relayed at the point of need.
Many airports have invested in a range of technologies to measure each passenger process or operational
bottleneck to help better plan and react accordingly. However, it is common that an individual process point is
measured in isolation and data sharing isnt common. A centralised database can aggregate wait-time data and
augment it with on-the-day forecasts in a visual dashboard. As a result, airports are able understand data and
adjust plans accordingly. These operational dashboards should provide a high level insight into all key passenger
processes. By inserting your own Service Level Agreements or ideals means that you have a visual on how well
your team are working. The ability to drill down into specific aspects of their terminal to look at processes in detail
is key, allowing for fine-tuning and educated decisions, resulting in continued optimisation.

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Information at the Point of Need?


Airport security is often highlighted by passengers as the most stressful part of their door-to-door journey, mainly
because of the unknown component around how long it will take, Yet many airports have this information but
dont share it with their passengers.
With over 83% of all travelling passengers using smartphones, engaging with your passenger via mobile apps offers
a quick win. The number of passengers now booking flights online, checking in online and navigating through your
airport via online maps is increasing. Providing your passenger with all the information they require to navigate
through your terminal will improve their experience.
The logical next step for mobile passenger information will be to provide personalised journey times and
directions across the airport using increasingly location-aware and passenger aware-services. Using innovative
technologies, airports will be able to provide passengers with their gate number, the expected walk time to gate,
retail discounts and the ability to purchase lounge access via their smartphone. Improving customer services by
improving passenger conveniences is a positive way to deliver customer satisfaction and can only be achieved
through centralised technology and process management.
Acceptable queuing time at security
2014

60%

2013
2012

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
More than 20 minutes

Between 10 and 20
minutes
Source: IATA 2014 Passenger Satisfaction Survey

Between 5 and 10
minutes

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Less than 5 minutes

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TERMINAL
With the increase of passenger and flight movements our airports are becoming more congested. To ensure
effective operations, airports require a mixture of passenger tracking, forecast planning and resource management
technology that allows airport operators to see how issues in the terminal might affect operations airside. Using
live data, airport operations can predict expected pinch points, capacity constraints and what might be causing
these problems. Having a unified view of your terminal will ensure that you are able to run proactive operations
landside. Operational dashboards are assisting some of the most efficient airports in the world to monitor,
optimise and improve processes.
Process Optimisation
Optimising processes is key to any airport. The ability to forecast, plan, deploy and review daily operational plans
to ensure that passenger processes, terminal operations and airside operations are working at the maximum
efficiency. The terminal operation is an important component of an airports revenue and profitability. The
effectiveness of the landside and airside operation teams has a direct impact on revenue generation. Passengers
wo receiveexcellent service and feel positive they are more likely to spend.
Reducing bottlenecks within terminal operations will result in free flowing traffic across terminal processes and
will help reduce costs and deliver passengers in to revenue generating areas more quickly and in a better mood
to do so.
Resourcing Efficiency & Tactical Deployment
Accurate on-the-day planning and forecasting has a very positive impact on airports operatingin a highly
constrained environment who are now able to optimise their operation to get the most out of their resources.
However, no matter how much airports plan for the day, deviations do occur almost daily. With 1 in 5 flights
arriving 15 minutes ahead or behind schedule, resource plans which are designed to handle a specific number
of passengers often have to accommodate these flight deviations, resulting in congestion at border control and
baggage arrival carousels.
By using accurate demand forecasting and planning solutions alongside real time process monitoring solutions,
airports are now able to ensure optimum resourcing for all aspects of their operation. Airports can identify
deviations to their expected on-the-day operation and are able to allocate resources effectively to manage these
deviations.

Passenger Flow Analysis & Capacity Planning


Understanding the flow of passengers through your terminal assists with layout planning, but airports need to
fully understand the reasons why passenger behave the way they do. Measuring passenger dwell time in checkin or retail areas provides useful insight into the passenger behaviour, their journey through the terminal and
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highlight steps that the airport can take to enhance passenger experience.
Non-Aviation Revenue
It is clear that when passengers spend more time in the departure lounge after security then retail spend will
increase. This ideal can only be achieved if an airport has an accurate measurement of passenger movements and
dwell times at all stages of their journey. Key pinch points at security can only be eliminated as a result of proper
planning and effective operation, particularly at peak times. Communication of wait times to passengers is often
neglected, a simple process that will ensure they are well informed and remain relaxed.
In the wider retail landscape, the need for accurate, consistent and transparent data is critical for measuring
success and ensuring customer-centric retail operations. Within individual stores, footfall data combined with
sales figures can deliver detailed conversion rate analysis and, in turn, help with performance benchmarking and,
perhaps most importantly, resourcing allocations. One of the biggest barriers to delivering increased retail sales
is the perception of in-store wait time. The longer passengers spend in queues the less time they have available
to shop. By using queue and dwell measurement solution, retailers have the ability to display live wait times improving sales metrics by addressing customer misconceptions, thus reducing walkaways.
From a strategic viewpoint, leveraging technology to optimise resourcing and passenger facilitation would improve
the passenger experience, providing addition benefits beyond increasing non-aviation revenues.
Defined and Measurable Benchmarks/KPIs and SLAs
You cant manage what you cant measure. With multiple stakeholders working within your airport and taking
responsibility for passenger processes, airports must look at ways to ensure they are measuring effectively against
any Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). By measuring processes, airports are
able to have greater insight into the performance of their outsourced organisations and gain insight into any
SLA or KPI breaches. Measuring performance also helps to avoid any regulatory penalties against service. For
example, the Irish CAA has regulations in place stating that passengers should not wait any longer that 30 minutes
at security, and if that regulation is breached, airports are fined 120,000. Dublin Airport can proactively manage
their check point and respond early if it looks like they appoach their SLA threshold.
Having clear definitions also encourages accountability across the stakeholder community as the visibility of any
poor performance is increased.

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AIRSIDE, APRON & EN-ROUTE


Airside & Apron
Many airports are utilising decision support tools and services which provide a comprehensive and innovative
solution to surface management. These tools enable the operators to increase apron capacity, improve the
efficiency of their departures, reduce the surface congestion and lower their airline customers operating costs.
The key enabler for increasing on-time operations is the introduction of a departure sequencing technology that
provides visibility on the forecasted departure times of aircraft and dynamically adapts to the ever-changing
situation on the surface.
As well as the clear operational efficiencies that this level of situational awareness delivers, operators will also be
able to optimise staff resource utilisation, improved environmental performance due to less fuel burn and noise
pollution.
Going beyond simple information provision, system integration and situational visibility is the ability to proactively
track and manage the key milestones around the aircraft turnaround process. Providing detailed analysis of the
aircraft turnaround process offers greater predictability around Target Off-Blocks Time (TOBT) based on the
tracking of all key sub-milestones, their expected completion time and impact on dependencies.
By consolidating data from disparate stakeholder systems into one common operational view fusing real-time
data and predictive algorithms to forecast airport surface operations airport operators allows greater visibility into
on-going operations and enhance the on-time performance.

En-Route
With optimisation and efficiency at the forefront of airport operators minds, terminal efficiency is only one piece
of the puzzle. As demonstrated by SESAR in Europe and NextGen in the US, civil aviation stakeholders are exploring
efficient ways to optimise en-route traffic management.
The main focus is to optimise the flow of aircraft into capacity-constrained areas, as seen in many worldwide
airspace blocks, decrease delays through better predictability of airspace use, and improve fuel efficiency. Timebased metering, delivering aircraft to a specific place at a specific time, enables air traffic controllers to manage
aircraft in congested airspace more efficiently by smoothing out irregularities and delivering a more consistent
flow of traffic down to the runway. Time-Based Flow Metering, in conjunction with En-Route Automation
Modernisation (ERAM) will allow the faster processing of route requests and flight changes, as well as calculating
the optimum moment of travel and in turn reduce delays, long taxi times and excessive fuel burn.
These objectives will provide both airports and airlines with the opportunity to provide a more streamlined
experience to passengers, while also reaping the benefit of reduced fuel burn, capacity constraints and improve
the forecast planning of the terminal and airside operations.
One of the key developments in this area is around the management of aircraft when affected by strong winds.
Many airports suffer from a large proportion of wind days, resulting in cancelations and delays to aircraft. When
the wind is high, the standard distance based separation doesnt allow of optimisation of the runway as the
approach speeds of aircraft differ due to size. The solution to this problem is switching from Distance Based
Separation to Time Based Separation when wind speed is above a certain level. This solution will deliver the
correct number of aircraft to airspace sectors and down to the runway at the exact pace at which the aircraft can
be accommodated.

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An Airports Role in En-Route Optimisation


Airports are no longer just seen as facilitator; they have a much larger role to play in the future efficiencies of
our skies. With a continual rise in the number of passengers choosing air travel, multiple stakeholders need to
combine their communication to ensure safe and efficient travel. CDM is the platform for more efficient skies and
benefits are visible to all stakeholders whether its the airport itself or air traffic controllers. Key to stakeholder
engagement; airports are the creators and distributors of key data, which ultimately has an impact on all airside,
departure, air traffic flow and arrival decisions.
The majority of stakeholders such as ground handlers, aircraft operators, air navigation service providers and of
course, the passenger are all involved in your daily operations. Having robust solutions which deliver real-time
information to point of need, will assist you with your CDM processes, allowing you to streamline your operation
and make your airport more efficient.
More importantly, the airport is in control of the core operational data required for this optimisation the Airport
Operational Data Base (AODB).

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CONNECTING TRANSPORT
Transport Connections
Regardless of connections to rail networks, bus or tram links or road access, all of these transportation links are
key to passengers getting to where they want to go. Many large hubs have an extensive transport interchange
which allows passengers to access the airport quickly and without hassle. The process does not start at check-in;
it starts when the passenger begins their journey to the airport.
For example, in many cases, airports own the approach roads/highways leading to the airport. These roads are
often affected by traffic congestion. Some of the most forward thinking airports have utilised technology to
monitor congestion on these approach roads as they have an impact on all of your landside operations.
Alongside the transport links mentioned, hub airports need to understand their own transfer connections and how
this impacts passenger perception. Having seamless and optimised transfer processes is vital to any passenger as
it helps reduce uncertainty and stress, especially to those with tight transfer windows. Clear way finding and
estimate travel time between gates is an easy and effective way to ensure passenger satisfaction.

Passengers
By providing real time data through your website or mobile app, you will be able to proactively assist your
passenger in all aspects of their journey. Using smartphones means that as a society we are planning our everyday
life more efficiently. This is particularly relevant when we travel, where relevant and reliable information is even
more important. To achieve this passengers require credible, precise and real-time updated information.
Informing passengers of any traffic incidents, times at your security check point and the estimated time of
departure will give the passenger the power to make conscious decisions. Based on this information it is possible
to plan travel down to single minutes, whether at home, in the office or at the airport. Airports want passengers
to process through landside operations as quickly; reducing overcrowding and delivering passengers in to revenue
generating operations more quickly.

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CORE IT PLATFORMS
Airport Operations Platforms
Traditional airport platforms consist of many point applications, loosely coupled together with minimal automation,
integration and consolidation. There are multiple versions of the truth and lots of manual updating and inputting
of data.
In such a data rich and fast paced environment airports need to adopt a core operational and wider IT platform
that is agile enough to cope with these demands. Single systems will no longer deliver the desired levels of
operational performance, efficiency and passenger experience.
This consolidated platform should encompass all key applications AODB, RMS, FIDS, Billing, ERP, Business
Intelligence and so on; integrate these with the wider airline and DCS systems but provide assurances on the
safety and security of these solutions via a robust approach to cyber security. Breaking down operational silos
will enable stakeholders to share data, providing real-time updates across the operation, which in turn speeds up
decision making.
Airport-to-Airport Data Sharing
Airport-to-airport data sharing will be the future of all airport interoperability standards and ensures the industry
keeps pace with the desire of efficiency and collaboration.
Through EUROCONTROLs Airport Collaborative Decisions Making (A-CDM) initiative, information sharing is the
major focus of European airports and the potential benefits of sharing data across airport networks is huge. The
movement towards data sharing will allow other airports within the region to improve airside, departure and enroute predictability, resulting in optimised processes.
Data sharing will continue to be a focus for the industry, specifically through the current initiatives such as Airport
Dictionary Information Exchange (AIDX) and the ACI-ACRIS (Aviation Community Recommended Information
Services) groups. These steering groups are focused on providing better data sharing and an industry wide
common data dictionary, reducing the reliance on software interfaces.
Cyber Security
In the past, airports have naturally focussed on physical threats but in reality, the growing threat comes through
the wire. Because of the importance of aviation to the national infrastructure, it is vital that we look at our
operating system set up to ensure that we are protected from cyber threats as a single breach could have
enormous consequences.

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WHAT NEXT?
Depending on your role within the airport process, there are a many ways you can work to enable and improve
collaborative working across stakeholders.
You can explore more of our content relevant to your role below:

EN-ROUTE

AIRSIDE

TERMINAL

Webinar:
Intelligent
Approach at LHR

Whitepaper:
Enhancing Airside
and Landside Data
Management

Whitepaper:
Embracing Technology
to Achieve Service
Excellence

Product Information:
Intelligent Approach

Case Study:
Avinor

Case Study:
CPH Forecasting

ROI Calculator:
Intelligent Approach

Product Information:
Chroma Suite

Product Information:
BEONTRA

MANAGEMENT
Whitepaper:
Forecasting and
Managing Airport
Passenger Growth

AODB Business Case


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TRANSPORT // COLLABORATIVE DECISION MAKING ACROSS THE AIRPORT PROCESS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Andrew Shanks has been working within the aviation industry since 1998; from 1998 to 2009 within
an airport operational environment at Aberdeen, Manchester and Heathrow Airports, and since
2009 as Lockheed Martins Airport Specialist.
With a wide range of experience across the airport campus; covering ramp operations, baggage handling, staff training and airport operational systems, Andrew can apply his deep knowledge of airport
when dealing with Lockheed Martins customers.
Whilst at Aberdeen Airport, Andrew was the project leader for the replacement of their AOS legacy
Andrew Shanks

system with Lockheed Martins Chroma suite and knows first-hand the complexities of large scale
projects.
A graduate of Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Andrew still resides in The Granite City although is a frequent traveller due to his role within Lockheed Martin which involves him working
with our airport customers.

andrew.shanks@civil.lmco.com

ABOUT LOCKHEED MARTIN


Lockheed Martin is a leading provider of airport and air traffic operational systems to the global
aviation industry. Our aviation heritage is unmatched; and our focus on innovation, research and
development is crucial in developing more efficient and effective aviation operations in to the future.
Our airport operational platform, the Chroma Airport Suite, is trusted by over 70 airports across
3 continents to help more efficiently handle 1.1 billion passengers and 3 million flight movements
annually. Our air traffic systems manage over 60% of the worlds airspace and are responsible for
generating greater capacity via more effective flow management.
Our people, track record, heritage and international reach provide customers across the aviation sector
with the confidence to trust Lockheed Martin to deliver the next generation of truly collaborative,
efficient and data-rich operations.

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