Why it is counterproductive to let passengers know how long waiting lines are

People say that knowledge is power. The more knowledge, the more power. Suppose you knew the winning numbers for the lottery?  What would you do? You would run to the store and mark those numbers on the play card. And you would win.

Same for airports? Suppose you knew the waiting time at checkpoints like at Dulles International Airport. What would you do? Experience shows that when there is not much waiting time passengers tend to dwell and get to the checkpoint later. Which may create a problem later. It also shows that when there is long waiting time passengers tend to go to the checkpoint immediately. Which increases the problem now.

I think that airports should endeavor to steer the passengers indirectly based on the information they have. They may wait to announce gates until they see that there is capacity at checkpoints. They may change gates of arriving flights or bring passengers to other arrival halls.

Airport business is full of decisions and judgements and guesses, and also looking outside of the box.

3 Reasons Why Airport Operators Are Not Customer Oriented

All what passengers want is good service, including less delays and less lost bags. They do not care who owns or runs the airport. Though there is a lot of discussion about passenger experience there are a few reasons why airports are not customer focussed.

Here are the top three:



1. Airport Operators do not know who their customer is. There was this Airport Operator who had an executive meeting to kick-off their Balanced Scorecard process. The goal of the first workshop was to define the Balanced Scorecard. After a day's discussion they had to abort the meeting, because they could not agree on who their customer was. Airline or passenger? Or even retailer, or visitor? They all deliver revenue.

2. Airport Operators lack competition. In another post I was highlighting the fact that for local passengers there is no real competition between airports. Suppose you live and work in Zurich. Would you choose Munich or Geneva as your home airport because you encountered bad service at Zurich Airport? Not really.

3. Airport Operators do not think short-term. Airport Operators are a different species if you look at all the other stakeholders at the airport. Airlines, ground handlers, retailers, they all have to move quickly to consistently win their customers. They face high variable cost while Airport Operators are investment driven with high fix cost. Airport Operators think in master plans and capex and do not look at current customer (who is it?) needs. Not in the short term.