You're facing staffing shortages in airport terminals. How can you effectively manage passenger flow?

Effectively managing passenger flow during staffing shortages in airport terminals involves strategic planning and resource allocation. Implement self-service kiosks and automated check-in systems to reduce the burden on staff and speed up the process. Use clear signage and digital displays to guide passengers efficiently through the terminal. Prioritize critical areas such as security checkpoints and boarding gates by reallocating available staff. Enhance communication by keeping passengers informed of wait times and potential delays through announcements and mobile alerts. Encourage the use of mobile boarding passes to streamline the boarding process.

Optimizing schedules should be done in a continious and rolling approach to ensure adaptations of resource schedules according to all changes. Ideally, there is an agreed buffer with the service providers like security agents to easily up- and downscale the required staffing. At the day of operations it is important to measure and predict in real-time to respond fast to all upcoming operational changes in order to facilitate the staff onsite in the best manner.

Technology is a key factor in managing passenger flows and enabling higher capacity without increasing demand of staff resources. This can be done through self-service technologies for passengers, but also throuhg permanent observation of people flows at check-points, but also in between. Therefore, LiDAR technology is extremely helpful as it enables airport operators to measure and track people flows in an anonymous and GDPR compliant way. In addition, real-time flow forecast and simulation solutions help operators and their stakeholders to be pro-active in managing upcoming peaks and unexpected flow changes instead of being re-active, managing queues when they are already happening.

Simplify processes and self-service for passengers go almost hand in hand. In order to build a good self service approach all potential types of users need to be considered. Different cultures, languages, ages or even passengers with disabilities need to be able to consume and process certain self-service steps. This means also to simplify these processes to an extend everybody can use them without additional staff to guide people through.

Passenger communication is getting more and more crucial in an age where passengers get almost every information via different sources in the internet. Information about delays are sometimes faster accessible through publicly available flight tracking platforms than throuhg the corresponding airline or airport. This needs to be changed in a way that passengers feel always well informed about changes in the right way at the right time.

Every airport is an ecosystem of its own that consists of various stakeholders which, in the end, need to work hand in hand to guarentee smooth operations. Typically these are the airport operator, airlines, ground handlers, security companies and border police. Additional stakeholders like retailers and airside operations need also to be engaged in order to establish a fully transperant Terminal operations that is considering all aspects of the passenger journey.