Can Tech Help Prevent a Long Queue Summer
Short staff, long queue: What has and hasn't changed compared with previous summers?
The challenges airports and passengers faced during headline-making summer travel seasons were partly due to a surge in air travel and a strained labor force. 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.
Most observers expect that air travel will reach new record this summer, 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 past summer issues, 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 previous summers 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 | airport | peak travel | PFMS | KPI |
