Let us grow off-peaks

Many airports continuously operate at or above capacity. Not necessarily throughout the day, but during peak hours. The most obvious solution to this problem is to make the airport infrastructure match the demand. However, there may be economical, political, environmental, space, time or other constraints preventing this. What about other approaches which are feasible without major investments and in a shorter timeframe?

Obviously, you can improve your current operational performance. You will find posts here about efficiency and effectivity, basically doing the right things right. There is, however, an area I have not explored yet, why not grow off-peaks? Let me explore two out of many textbook solutions to this problem.

Peak Pricing

One straight forward approach would be to differentiate the price of airport slots between different periods. There are often significant variations in the demand for slots at different times of day, on different days of the week and during different months of the year which can result in airports operating at full capacity at peak periods, whilst many slots may remain unused at off-peak periods. If the price of a peak period slot was higher than the price of an off-peak slot the demand for slots may be rescheduled.

Aviation Marketing

Aviation/airline marketing teams work together with airlines to explore market opportunities, support start-up operations and to help maintain a positive long-term partnership between the airline and the airport. Now this sounds great and simple to attract airlines for peak times. It may be hard though to attract them for off-peak periods, but let me give you an example on how this could be achieved. There may be this legacy carrier which is the only airline flying a specific route. Suppose you can convince an airline, e.g. a no frill airline, to operate to the same destination during off-peak times. How? Maybe you offer them a kick-back for every additional passenger on this route, including additional passengers flying on the legacy carrier. Winners? The airport, the new airline and ground handlers. Loosers? The legacy carrier which looses some yield, but do you care as an airport?

I am not sure whether this works at every airport, it has worked at least at one. Why not give it a try?

Airports grow in peaks

During the economic downturn passenger numbers fell remarkably. However, we noticed two interesting trends. Firstly, the record slump was mostly with local passengers, best in class airports were stable or increased their transfer passengers. Secondly, the peaks grew! Traffic grew where there is most value added which is obviously in the peaks. Difficult times for airport operation managers who ask for more resources while passenger figures are going down.

I spoke to a head of operations recently who was struggling with consultants who were trying to convince him that over time his airport would grow in off-peak. Definitely worth thinking about when you do your planning. Our experience shows that airports grow in peaks.



See this example: At this airport, the number of days with peak traffic increased dramatically. You will notice that year to date 2010 there were already 9 days with more than 75'000 passengers and 7 days with more than 80'000 passengers.