Guidebook for Conducting Airport User Surveys (2009) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 73-118
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From page 73... ...
Surveys of air passengers are the most common type of airport user survey and are performed for a variety of reasons, including data collection on the following: • Air party characteristics for airport terminal planning. • Air passenger use of ground transportation for airport groundside15 planning and regional transportation planning.
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From page 74... ...
There are a number of issues specific to air passenger surveys that need to be considered in planning the survey and designing the questionnaire, including how to account for air passengers traveling together and the variation in air travel characteristics by time of the day and day of the week. 5.2.1 Issues Specific to Air Passenger Surveys The first issue to consider is that air passengers often travel in groups, referred to as air travel parties, so it is important for surveys to collect information on the composition of the air travel party.
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From page 75... ...
. Question DIA1999 MWCOG 2000 LAWA 2001 MTC 2001 Airline/flight Flight destination Originating/connecting Originating only Arriving/departing/connecting Final destination of air trip Purpose of trip Number of people in air travel party Number of well-wishers Departure time from trip origin Arrival time at airport Before flight Type of ground access trip origin Ground access trip origin address Mode of transportation to airport Use of parking/terminal curb Parking facility used Duration vehicle parked How accessed bus or train Reason for choosing access mode Number of checked bags Number of carry-on bags Where checked bags Use of airport in past year Use of other airports in area State of residence Country City/zip code of residence Nights away on trip/nights in area Time of arrival/return flight Airport used for arrival/return Egress mode on arrival/return Number of people in household Total annual household income Vehicles available at household Age of respondent Gender of respondent Satisfaction with facilities/services Amount spent while visiting area Amount spent at airport Reason for choosing airport Preferred airport Note: Table does not show all questions asked in each survey.
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From page 76... ...
From the perspective of ground access planning, it may be best to present results in terms of ground access party or air parties, because, generally, each air party represents a single ground access decision (with the caveats noted above)
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From page 77... ...
Personal travel shows the reverse pattern, with resident personal trips increasing toward the end of the week, with the highest proportion on Fridays. Visitor personal trips are at their highest proportion on Sundays and decline steadily during the week, reaching their lowest proportion on Thursdays and Fridays.
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From page 78... ...
San Francisco International Airport 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Mon Tue Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun Day of Week Resident Business Resident Personal Visitor Business Visitor Personal Source: Metropolitan Transportation Commission, 2006 Airline Passenger Survey (Project team analysis of survey response data)
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From page 79... ...
San Francisco International Airport 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24+ Hour Resident Business Resident Personal Visitor Business Visitor Personal Source: Metropolitan Transportation Commission, 2006 Airline Passenger Survey (Project team analysis of survey response data)
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From page 80... ...
• Whether to use printed questionnaire forms or EDCDs. In the case of interviews in airline gate lounges, it is generally not feasible to interview every air party in the lounge, because of time and staffing constraints.
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From page 81... ...
Typical respondent sampling sequences in airline gate lounges.
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From page 82... ...
• Check that number of air travel party members reported coming to airport in same ground access vehicle is not greater than reported size of air travel party. • Check that reported number of air travel party members coming to airport in same ground access vehicle is reasonable for reported vehicle.
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From page 83... ...
(Check response option or write in.) Hotel/motel courtesy shuttle Did you stay overnight at that hotel, or did you visit the hotel only for the purpose of getting to the airport?
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From page 84... ...
A number of issues arise with self-completed surveys that need to be carefully considered in the wording of the survey questions, design of the form, and analysis of the results: • It will not always be possible to determine which passengers are in the same air party when distributing the forms, so it is common practice to distribute forms to every adult passenger. In some air parties more than one passenger will provide responses, while other passengers may decide not to complete the form if they see someone else in their air party doing so or complete it together.
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From page 85... ...
In cases where conflicting responses are unlikely to both be correct (e.g., passengers traveling on the same ground access vehicle giving different departure times from the same trip origin) , it will be necessary to define a rule for which response to accept.
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From page 86... ...
Groundside Locations. Intercept surveys of air passengers can also be performed in nonsecure locations on the airport groundside, such as the terminal curb front, parking lots or payment machines, transit stations or boarding areas, rental car facilities, and inter-terminal shuttle bus stops or people-mover stations.
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From page 87... ...
If the survey sponsor wishes to obtain information on air passengers' airport egress travel rather than their access travel, surveys could be conducted in the baggage claim areas, at the terminal curb front, or as passengers exit the secure area of the terminal. Such surveys need to be fairly short, because respondents will generally want to quickly complete their journey or may be anxious to meet some scheduled or pre-arranged ground transportation.
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From page 88... ...
The distribution of the time before scheduled flight departure that passengers on a particular flight clear security can be estimated from the survey results and then applied to the estimated passenger loads to estimate the flow rate through security, with appropriate adjustments for passengers on connecting and through flights. Airline Gate Lounges One of the most common locations for an air passenger survey is the airline gate lounges.
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From page 89... ...
A major disadvantage of performing an interview survey in airline gate lounges is the small opportunity that interviewers will have to survey passengers who arrive at the gate just before or after boarding begins. If those arriving at the gate close to flight departure time have different characteristics from those arriving much earlier, as is quite likely, the survey will give biased results for those characteristics.
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From page 90... ...
As a practical matter, the only way to perform random or sequential sampling of the air passenger population without resorting to a flight-based cluster sample is to interview passengers at a location where all passengers can be intercepted, such as the exit from security screening. The extent to which a flight-based cluster sample should increase the sample size to provide an equivalent level of accuracy to that calculated for a random sample is dependent on the specific traffic composition at each airport, the characteristics of interest, and how these vary between passengers on particular flights and on average between flights.
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From page 91... ...
As discussed in Section 3.3, a controlled sample attempts to design the sampling strategy so that the composition of the sample reflects the underlying distribution of the population characteristics fairly accurately. In the case of air passenger surveys, this means Air Passenger Surveys 91 17 Monthly data on passenger loads by airline and flight segment are available from the U.S.
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From page 92... ...
When a respondent is in an air travel party of more than one person, the count to determine the next nth passenger in a sequential sampling strategy should start again if the next nth passenger is a member of the air party that has just been interviewed. This method will avoid interviewing multiple passengers from the same air party.
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From page 93... ...
For these reasons, queues are generally not a good location to perform intercept interview surveys. In locations where passengers are not in an ordered sequence, such as in airline gate lounges or baggage claim areas, it will be necessary to define a starting point for the sequence of passengers in the sample and a rule for the direction to move to determine the next passenger to interview.
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From page 94... ...
Instead, the usual approach is to define a sampling strategy that ensures that the selected flights provide a reasonable sample of each of these three factors. One such approach is to list flights throughout the period of the survey in order of scheduled flight departure time and calculate the cumulative number of departing seats for each flight.
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From page 95... ...
Further adjustments may be necessary to ensure that the survey field teams have a fairly steady workload throughout their shift. A flight that has a scheduled departure time too close to that of other flights in the sample could be dropped and replaced with another flight with the same characteristics but a scheduled departure time during a period when the number of selected flights is not enough to keep the survey field teams occupied.
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From page 96... ...
The figures show the distribution of departing seats from Logan International Airport in Boston for different markets for the week of the Thanksgiving holiday 96 Guidebook for Conducting Airport User Surveys 0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500 4,000 4,500 5,000 5 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Hour of Day D ep ar tin g Se at s Canada Cen.Am & Caribb Europe US < 500 miles US 500-999 miles US 1,000+ miles Source: Official Airline Guide for November 19, 2007 (excluding flights to Africa, 185 seats Tuesday and Friday)
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From page 97... ...
. Because connecting passengers tend to arrive in airline gate lounges earlier than originating passengers, starting to survey flights too long before flight departure time will tend to over-sample connecting passengers.
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From page 98... ...
Examples of problems that can arise include the following: • Terminology for ground access modes, particularly modes such as scheduled airport bus, limousine, hotel courtesy shuttle, and charter van. In some areas, the term "limousine" is used for scheduled airport bus service and may appear in the name of the service, while a vehicle hired for the exclusive use of an air party may be referred to as a "hire car." However, some respondents may confuse hire car with rental car.
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From page 99... ...
5.4.1 Trip Origin Information Sponsors of air passenger surveys often wish to obtain information on the ground access trip origin location (or ground egress trip destination location)
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From page 100... ...
This other usage will affect the familiarity of air passengers with the local transit system and may affect whether public transit is even considered as an option for getting to the airport. In the case of other forms of public transportation, such as privately operated scheduled airport bus services, air passengers (particularly visitors to the area)
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From page 101... ...
Therefore it will be necessary to weight the survey responses in order to improve the accuracy of the resulting data. Because the exact composition of the air passenger population is generally unknown (this is why the survey is being performed)
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From page 102... ...
, then counts obtained from the survey responses should be divided by the air party size in order to express the traffic composition in terms of air parties. Conversely, if the survey responses reflect air parties (i.e., there is only one survey response for each air travel party)
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From page 103... ...
to examine the survey responses; identify responses from the same party based on the party characteristics, such as their trip origin address or other information; and revise the reported survey completion information before calculating weights to correct for underreporting of air party members. It is also quite common to apply weights to self-completed survey responses to factor up the responses to the number of passengers boarding the flight.
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From page 104... ...
If such differences are found, the survey responses can be weighted by the ratio of the number of air parties or air passengers in each period or subgroup to the number of responses obtained for that period or subgroup. Such weights should be normalized so that the total number of weighted responses is the same as the number of actual responses.
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From page 105... ...
.23 Air Passenger Surveys 105 23 If the survey results will be expressed in terms of annual traffic, it is important that results showing air party characteristics be weighted to give the total number of annual air parties, not air passengers.
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From page 106... ...
This section discusses some of these differences and how they can affect air passenger surveys. 5.7.1 Multi-Airport Cities A metropolitan area served by a number of airports presents a problem in determining the characteristics of air passengers with respect to the entire metropolitan area.
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From page 107... ...
With intercept interviews, interviewers must be trained so that they fully understand the questions and, if necessary, can restate a question in local terminology. 5.8 Information on Greeters and Well-Wishers A survey sponsor may wish to gather information on greeters and well-wishers as part of an air passenger survey.
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From page 108... ...
In the absence of a structured sample plan from which to derive weight factors for each interview, it is necessary to obtain ancillary data in order to calculate appropriate weights for the survey responses. 5.9.1 Purpose Groundside surveys are used to gather information on vehicle use patterns by air passengers and associated greeters and well-wishers to plan future groundside facilities or to create and calibrate a ground transportation model that will be used in future planning studies.
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From page 109... ...
Groundside surveys are designed to collect complete information on the vehicle trips serving arriving and departing air passengers, including the characteristics of the well-wishers and greeters that accompany those passengers. This information enables the development of four time curves associated with air passenger departure and arrival activity: • The time before flight departure that air passengers and any accompanying well-wishers arrive at the airport.
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From page 110... ...
The following interviewer staffing guidelines are based on an extensive groundside survey at Toronto Pearson International Airport in 2005: • Curb area: – Three interviewers per terminal door for a single multi-use curb. – Two interviewers per terminal door for a public use (inner or outer)
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From page 111... ...
In addition, there are "pay on foot" parking payment machines at two locations in the terminal, a single lobby for the rental car agencies, no off-site remote service, and a common drop-off location for all rental car agencies. Table 5-4 shows the expected interview Air Passenger Surveys 111 Table 5-4.
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From page 112... ...
Example of number of interviewers required. Area Interviewers Departures Area Departures curb -- 3 doors into terminal 9 Bus and shuttle drop-off 3 Rental car drop-off 1 Arrivals Area Arrivals curb -- inner area, 12 stops, plus 2 taxi queues 5 Arrivals curb -- outer area, 3 doors 6 Parking payment machines 4 Rental car pick-up lobby 1
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From page 113... ...
For example, at the taxi drop-off or taxi queue areas, there are usually only air passengers; therefore, response options that greeters or well-wishers could choose would not appear on the survey form for those locations. Another section will deal with the trip origin or destination within the local area.
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From page 114... ...
Checklists are particularly useful for organizational tasks involving a number of people. Common types of checklists used in passenger surveys, and examples of items covered, are as follows: • Preparation of contract -- defining contract, taking care of legal and administration details, setting survey schedule, preparing the RFP, defining evaluation criteria, determining where to publicize the RFP and/or to whom to send it, holding pre-bid meeting, conducting proposal evaluation and contractor selection (holding interviews if required)
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From page 115... ...
Air Passenger Surveys 115
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From page 116... ...
5.11.4 Sampling Plans • Who will prepare the sampling plan for each day? How long will this take?
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From page 117... ...
• Will this presentation incur costs such as mileage or airfare, car rental, parking, and per diems? 5.12 Summary Air passenger surveys are the most common type of airport user survey, but they involve many complex issues that need careful consideration if the results are to be useful and accurate.
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From page 118... ...
These surveys are best conducted either in the airline gate lounges before a flight departs or as passengers arrive or depart from the security screening area. The choice of location will depend on factors such as the survey population, the types of information being collected, the layout of the terminal(s)
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