National Academies Press: OpenBook

Common Use Facilities and Equipment at Airports (2008)

Chapter: Chapter Seven - Airport Considerations for Common Use Implementations

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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Seven - Airport Considerations for Common Use Implementations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Common Use Facilities and Equipment at Airports. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14164.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter Seven - Airport Considerations for Common Use Implementations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Common Use Facilities and Equipment at Airports. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14164.
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Page 31
Page 32
Suggested Citation:"Chapter Seven - Airport Considerations for Common Use Implementations." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2008. Common Use Facilities and Equipment at Airports. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/14164.
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Page 32

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For various reasons, airport operators are establishing a need for moving along the common use continuum. Based on in- terviews and limited documentation on the subject, an airport operator may establish need through any one or combination of the following: • Promote competition. Several airport operators have implemented common use as a method of meeting their FAA competition planning requirements. These plan- ning requirements apply to a limited number of airports. The FAA makes a determination and publishes a list of large- and medium-hub airports that it requires to pre- pare and submit a competition plan. These airports are characterized as having one or two airlines controlling more than 50% of the annual passenger enplanements. Several of these airport operators have identified com- mon use as a method to enable the required competition at their airport, thus allowing the airport operator to have its PFCs approved to receive a grant issued under the Airport Improvement Program. Many of these com- petition plans use common use as a tool to provide rea- sonable and necessary access to ensure that an airport has a level playing field for all entrants to the market. • Increase efficiencies with limited resources. According to interviews, several airport operators needed to in- crease service at their airports while keeping airline op- erating costs down. These operators employed common use to increase gate utilization efficiency and to help defer capital expenditures that would otherwise be nec- essary for gate, concourse, or terminal construction. Common use can enable airport operators to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively. Increased effi- ciency is also important if airports are to keep pace with growing workloads brought on largely by low-cost car- riers, which typically bring a higher number of flights into a facility. Airports today are squeezing more peo- ple through fewer resources. This is a growing concern today, because many existing terminal facilities were not designed to accommodate such intense traffic. • Increase flexibility of airport resources. For airport op- erators, a basic mandate today is increased flexibility in both costs and business models, which allows them to adapt to shifts in the business environment. Both air- lines and airports are in the process of reinventing them- selves and developing business plans that are flexible enough to make dramatic shifts in operations. To a large extent, this means changing the often-rigid agree- ments that airports have with airlines. Other reasons for 30 increased flexibility include temporary relocation of airline operations owing to construction and demolition and handling of seasonal overflows. • Provide equal access and facilities. Many of the inter- viewees identified the need to ensure that airlines have equal facilities available to them, which also enables competition. Some airports have installed LDCSs to en- able smaller airlines, charters, and others to provide an alternative to the manual boarding process. This solu- tion allows airlines that do not have LDCS to still sup- port automated, or electronic, boarding procedures. In addition, GIDS are increasingly being added to com- mon use implementations. If GIDS are provided to the airlines by the airport, then airlines that do not have their own GIDS can provide their passengers with in- formation about flight status, standby passengers, and other features that are provided by a GIDS system. • Allow for new entrant carriers or expansion of existing carriers. Several airport operators indicated that they are concerned about the potential for large, dominant air carrier operations either eliminating or greatly reducing operations at their airport. Without common use, these airports would be unable to reassign these gates to other carriers in a quick and efficient manner. Airport opera- tors are implementing various levels of common use to accommodate access requests of several new entrants and expanding carriers. • Combination of all. Noted in a recent FAA summary document, an airport stated the following as the basis for common use: Installing common use ticketing equipment at ticket counters and gates so that all airlines operating there will use identical gate check-in and gate CUTE equipment, thereby providing maximum flexibility in assigning gates, even on a per flight basis, thereby increasing the opportunities for competition; pro- vides Airline Entry Package and airport facilitates negotiations between requesting carriers and incumbents. Airport operators that were interviewed all agreed that it is critical for airport operators to identify the needs they are attempting to meet through common use and to clearly con- vey that need to all of the stakeholders. Once a need is clearly established, there is a growing list of issues an airport opera- tor must consider. Key considerations that were raised in interviews and research included obtaining political backing, identifying the proper business model, assessing impact on all operations, understanding airline operations, and making necessary modifications to airline agreements. Each of these key considerations is discussed in this chapter. CHAPTER SEVEN AIRPORT CONSIDERATIONS FOR COMMON USE IMPLEMENTATIONS

schedules. Any common use implementation should facili- tate expansion of, as well as contraction of, operations. In this way, the business model allows the airport to quickly respond to changes in airline operations without negatively affecting overall airport efficiency. When presenting the business case to the airlines operat- ing at the airport, the airport operator should clearly commu- nicate its intentions, the needs to be met, and benefits to the airlines. Some airports have successfully supported airlines by enabling them to create their own identity in a common use space and then clear out once they have completed their use of that space. One example is JFK Terminal 4, as seen in Figure 7. Airport operators should be clear on how common use will benefit the airlines. Areas of consideration include sup- porting split operations, quarterly growth, and constrictions in routes, as well as facilitating operations to handle changes in passenger volumes. Airport operators should indicate which areas of the airport will be made common use, such as ticketing counters, gate hold rooms, gates, or a combination of areas. The more an airport operator communicates, and the earlier in the process that they communicate, the better informed the airlines will be during the design and imple- mentation process. ASSESSING IMPACT ON ALL AIRPORT OPERATIONS During interviews, airport operators stressed the need to ana- lyze carefully all areas of airport operations and the potential impacts of common use installation on each. For example, an airport may choose to install common use at the gates, but may overlook that ticket counters are fully allocated, thereby barring entrant carriers at the ticket counters. Also, increased utilization of the ticket counter areas may adversely affect outbound baggage facilities. The demands placed on utility facilities of “clean power,” air conditioning, and backup power must also be considered. 31 POLITICAL BACKING Information gleaned through interviews indicated that it is critical for airport operators to have the proper political back- ing to support any common use initiative. As discussed in this paper, airlines traditionally do not support common use. As with many decisions at airports, there is a large amount of political influence that comes to bear on any major decisions involving airport operations. Airport operators should have a clear understanding of the needs that are required to be filled, as well as any federal or local policies that could influence the decision to implement common use. In many instances, there are no applicable federal or local policies and it may be necessary to create a local policy to facilitate the common use initiative. There are, however, national level strategies that are addressing future demand and capacity. These are causing a ripple effect, from a terminal planning perspective, on airport operators, who are increasingly looking toward common use to solve terminal, capacity, and roadway capac- ity issues. For a summary of some of the FAA initiatives that affect common use, see Appendix E. A key element of the political backing is to ensure that the money is available to pay for any common use solu- tions. It is important not only to ensure that the money is in the budget, but that the authorities required for expenditure approval are properly informed and prepared for the air- port’s request. Although common use implementations are not as expensive as constructing a concourse or a terminal, the costs are significant, and must be appropriately planned for in the budget. BUSINESS MODEL AND BUSINESS CASE All interviewed airport operators emphasized how critical it is to establish a clear business case for common use. As part of this business case, they also indicated that the business model for operating in a common use environment needed to be defined and presented to the airlines. These two elements were identified as the most critical factors in the success or failure of any common use implementation. Although there are many different business models, the air- port operators and airlines interviewed indicated that consis- tency and cost transparency were critically important. It was clear that airlines were more accepting of the charges neces- sary to operate a common use implementation if those costs for the system were readily available, explained, and easily un- derstood. Airlines indicated that they were not in favor of including the common use costs as part of a larger, roll-up number in the invoices submitted to the airlines. Airlines and airport operators both appeared to agree that charging based on an enplaned rate may simplify billings and make charges as transparent as possible. When defining the business case, it is necessary to con- sider the possibilities of airline bankruptcy, flight schedule reductions, as well as additional airlines and increased flight FIGURE 7 JFK Terminal 4.

Once airport operators begin using the common use continuum, they find themselves in new areas of liability, support, and staffing needs that many times are at first over- looked. Here are some examples. • Maintenance support and costs. Getting beyond the ini- tial capital costs and warranties, one issue to be decided is who will provide the long-term maintenance and sup- port. Some airports have chosen to increase staffing and provide the first-line maintenance support; others have chosen to outsource this function, whereas others have chosen to let the airlines establish a “club maintenance” contract. Each approach has its advantages and dis- advantages. • Accessibility and security. Being the equipment owner of common use components, the airport operator now assumes co-responsibility for issues dealing with ac- cessibility and data security. Compounding the situa- tion is that both of these areas are currently in a state of flux vis-à-vis common use technology components. Airport operators need to be attuned to the latest updates from governing bodies that regulate business operations covered by, for example, ADA and the Pay- ment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDSS). • Shared access to facility rooms. This is a primary con- cern when it comes to accessing the various telecom- munications network rooms, where the common use network components may share closet space with air- port-dedicated network equipment. • Customer service staff. With the use of CUSS ticketing and other similar common use components, passengers and airlines alike view these services as airport-provided, and airport operators find themselves having to supple- ment customer service staff, especially in the common areas of the airport. UNDERSTANDING AIRLINE OPERATIONS Although most airport operators fully understand that air- lines may be hesitant to endorse common use, they still fre- quently make the mistake of taking the “if you build it, they 32 will come” approach. For example, one airport recently in- stalled a series of free-standing CUSS units throughout the airport facility and is now finding most of the airlines fight- ing the use of the CUSS units. One airline explained that with its new business model, it no longer has any need for the self-service check-in kiosks as located and installed by this airport. The airline further stated that the airport operator never really asked its opinion about the function and location of this equipment. Understanding and working with airline internal mainte- nance and operations schedules will continue to grow in importance as more airports move down the common use continuum. Airlines have limited resources that must work with each of these airports. To manage their costs, the air- lines are establishing internal dates for software changes, hardware deployments, and procedural changes; all of which will impact an airport’s success in deploying common use. Airport operators must realistically analyze implementation schedules and help set appropriate expec- tations for management regarding completion dates and major milestones. AIRLINE AGREEMENT MODIFICATIONS Another area for airport operators to consider is the existing airline agreements. Before a common use initiative begins, airport operators should review their existing airline agree- ments and prepare any needed language updates. Although it is outside the scope of this document to directly address any language within these agreements, the airport operators who were interviewed all recommended that the airline operators consult with their attorneys about the terminology to change, modify, or update in their agreements. It is important, how- ever, to ensure that the airline agreements are not overlooked during the initial planning process to determine whether or not to implement common use. As discussed earlier, each step along the common use continuum requires a different agreement to move from exclusive use, to mixed use, to pref- erential use, and finally to full common use.

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TRB’s Airport Cooperative Research Program (ACRP) Synthesis 8: Common Use Facilities and Equipment at Airports explores common use technology that enables an airport operator to take space that has previously been exclusive to a single airline and make it available for use by multiple airlines and their passengers.

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