Tag: airport kiosks

OM in the News: Queuing Up at Airport Customs This Summer

 

Automated passport control kiosks for arriving passengers at JFK
Automated passport control kiosks for arriving passengers at JFK

Extremely long lines, which in 2013 stretched beyond four hours at times, are forecast to return again for the busy summer travel season, writes The Wall Street Journal (June 11,2014). In May, Washington Dulles, New York Kennedy and Miami International airports all experienced occasional maximum waits over 2½ hours. At San Francisco International’s Terminal A, the average wait time at Customs during the peak 1-2 p.m. hour was still 40 minutes, though that’s far better than the May 2013 average of 57 minutes at the same hour. “The cavalry is on the way, but they won’t arrive in time for this summer,” said the CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. “We just don’t have enough officers right now, and it’s like having one cashier at Costco.”

Budget issues have left staffing largely unchanged for years. As international travel has surged in the U.S., queues at passport control and Customs checkpoints at airports have backed up. Last year, 70 million international passengers arrived in the U.S., up from 55 million in 2009. And last summer the issue boiled over, with airports having to rush in water, chairs and cots for arriving passengers, many of whom got stranded when they missed flight connections.

The Customs department began letting airports and airlines pay to install the new Automated Passport Control kiosks for travelers who aren’t in Global Entry. (Global Entry lets travelers who have undergone fingerprinting, a background check and an in-person interview use a kiosk and bypass long lines.) Travelers scan their passports and answer questions on the kiosk while waiting in line. When they reach a Customs officer, the information can be quickly pulled up on a screen rather than entered manually by the officer. Shaving seconds off the inspection process has significantly sped up lines. At some airports, such as New York’s JFK, Chicago O’Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth and Orlando International, kiosks have helped reduce wait time as much as 40% despite increases in the number of people arriving.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. What options do OM managers have to speed up the Customs queues?

2. Why are airlines very concerned about the long waiting times at Customs?

OM in the News: The Self-Service Airport

Airlines are laying the groundwork for the next big step in the increasingly automated airport experience: a trip from the curb to the plane without interacting with a single airline employee, writes The Wall Street Journal (Aug.28, 2012).

For years, travelers have been checking in online or at airport kiosks and airlines have been converting paper boarding passes into electronic ones. Now carriers are turning to technology that enables travelers to check their own bags and scan those boarding passes, a topic we discuss in Chapter 5 on service design.

At the airport of the near future, “your first interaction could be with a flight attendant,” said Ben Minicucci, COO of Alaska Airlines. Alaska Air has been at the forefront of self-service in the U.S., recently introducing self-tagging of baggage in Seattle and San Diego with 8 more airports planned this year. Airlines say the  technology will quicken the airport experience for travelers—shaving 1-2 minutes from the checked-baggage process alone—and freeing airline employees to focus on fliers with questions.

Airline-employee unions say the machines are a way for carriers to cut staff by outsourcing pre boarding tasks to fliers. But a recent survey found self-boarding appeals to 70% of passengers and almost as many travelers want to tag their own bags. Self-tagging and self-boarding have each been implemented in 115 instances around the world.

U.S. airlines and airports are catching up to their counterparts in Europe, where  Lufthansa began testing self-boarding in the late 1990s. That airline officially implemented the technology last year in its three main hubs in Germany, where customers have readily adapted to it. “A lot of our passengers are frequent fliers who really prefer not to talk with staff all the time,” says Lufthansa. Last month in Las Vegas, JetBlue Airways became the first U.S. airline to officially implement self-boarding gates, where fliers scan their own tickets to board the plane.

Discussion questions:

1. In what ways can OM make airline check-in/boarding more efficient?

2. Will the concepts described become standard procedure in a decade? Why or why not?