Can Tech Help Prevent a Long Queue Summer
Short staff, long queue: What has and hasn't changed compared with summer 2022?
The challenges airports and passengers faced during the headline-making summer 2022 travel season were partly due to a patchwork of health restrictions in different jurisdictions and a labor force walloped by the Covid pandemic. This mismatch led to resource overloads that caused flight cancellations, lines winding out of terminals, and passengers demanding compensation for service breakdowns that disrupted not a small number of summer vacations.
With the most restrictive periods of the pandemic a dimming memory in many places, travelers are again taking to the skies in numbers approaching pre-pandemic levels. This upward trend was given a boost in the first quarter following the easing of travel restrictions in many Asian countries, including China.
The US's recent announcement that it will end Covid vaccination requirements for international travelers later this month will likely also lead to a significant increase in travelers over the summer. Whether the increase in passenger volume is a more significant strain on airports and airlines' capacity than verifying vaccination status is to be seen.
Most observers expect that there will be more travelers passing through airports this summer, potentially exceeding pre-pandemic levels, but the capacity for increasing staff levels remains a challenge. Some airports have made firm commitments to have the staffing needed to avoid a repeat of summer 2022, though industry professionals know that queueing situations can quickly overwhelm resources.
Automated, accelerated: How is tech improving aviation industry performance?
Labor strains are challenging for many industries, and aviation is no exception. Difficulties finding and retaining qualified workers at airports—from air traffic controllers to bus drivers—have come into focus as employers jostle to secure talent. The issue is also one for airlines facing a potential pilot shortage.
New technology has, is, and will be one of the solutions airports turn to for improving efficiency, enhancing the passenger experience, and managing operational costs. New advances promise to streamline security checks that are the source of much airport queuing by reducing the scope of items that must be removed from bags. Other touchpoints, such as immigration, emigration, and ticketing, are also expected to be improved with the help of more innovative tech solutions.
Airports, public and private, that are striving for better and quicker passenger processes because of reputational or legal risks or because of revenue goals are as interested in avoiding another chaotic summer travel season as passengers who dread the thoughts of hours in a long queue.
Measuring, reacting: How does Xovis help improve peak travel planning?
Many of the more than 110 airports that Xovis serves face the same challenges as others in the industry, and sometimes those can be insurmountable. What our Passenger Flow Management System (PFMS) does provide is accurate, objective, real-time data that airport operators can use to make optimal changes based on the available resources. Those operators can also look at historical data to plan for identifiable patterns and make staff scheduling decisions based on reliable findings.
The difficulties of summer 2022 may have been exceptional, but for airports using Xovis they were also valuable lessons about what could happen this summer. Preparation using precise historical and live data may not solve all the issues that are likely to arise in the coming months, but it can go a long way in helping move staff into position when things do happen.
Optimal resource allocation can be the difference between a queue and a long queue. And that has a very real impact on how travelers view an airport, an airline, or even a city, with indirect consequences reaching far beyond the bag scanner.
Tags: | summer travel 2023 | airport | peak travel | PFMS | KPI |