Airport operations within the departures terminal are primarily oriented towards moving people and baggage from check-in to the airplane with a minimum of delay. However,airports are also retail spaces, conference centres, restaurants, bars and entertainment centres.As such, it is not possible to simply channel people to their aircraft. Passengers have to be given autonomy and this result inproblems ensuring that the passengers and baggage arrive in a timely manner.
The solution to the problem lies in understanding passenger behaviour and providing relevant information when and where it is required. If the airport operator is able to link passenger and luggage location in a non-invasive manner, whilst providing the passenger with information on their flight and on airport services, there is a much greater chance of timely operations and increased customer satisfaction. The Airport Companion project will look to use a human factors approach to this problem. It comprises three main parts:
Understanding and Resolving Passengers’ Most Deeply-valued Needs: Many passenger satisfaction surveys have been conducted but very few have attempted to develop technological solutions to the outcomes.
We will analyse the behaviour of passengers (both able-bodied and disabled) within the terminal environment and through semi-structured engagement and interpretive ethno methodological approaches understand their motivating factors and the major barriers they experience.
This will enable the generalisation ontology and the hierarchy of needs of passengers to be determined and thus arriving at a set of consensus priority needs which hold for passengers. The results of this in terms of the functionalities and overall affordances (use cases, look & feel) of the target Airport Companion Systems and Services will feed into the framework architecture for the overall Airport Companion Services Solution The Airport Companion Device.
This will be a small electronic handheld device, specifically designed for the application. The Airport Companion will be offered to passengers at check-in. The device will help guide passengers through the airport infrastructure and allow them to fully maximise their time in the airport before they have to proceed to their gate and board the plane.
