Airports - 4 questions

I have previous posed a few questions to hotels on why they do things that seem counter-intuitive to the guest but are so endemic there must be another reason. Airports suffer from the same thing - I am surely not alone in expecting to be able to turn up to an airport in good time to take a flight, check-in and pass security, have a browse through the duty free stores then relax and check my status updates while I wait for the boarding gate to open. So why are so many airport still pursuing the following four infuriating customer experience practices?

1) A charge for everything

The cost of flying has been falling for years, even before the low-cost carriers like EasyJet, Ryanair, Jetstar, Spirit and JetBlue came on to the scene. One piece of research quite eloquently puts it:

In 1945 it took 130 average weeks salary to fly from Sydney to London return. In 1955 it was 52 weeks, in the mid 1960s with the advent of jets it was 22 weeks, and in the mid 1980s eight weeks. Today it is just one week’s average salary.

And so we see diversification, if less money is being spent on ticket sales themselves, both airlines and airports in particularly are getting ever more creative on what they can charge for. An expansion of retail provisions, hospitality and other entertainment are how Heathrow Terminal 5, Amsterdam Schiphol, Kuala Lumpur International and the sublime Changi Airport in Singapore have addressed this issue, while others have been arguably more 'creative'.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority has produced a handy list of the items charged for by 31 British airports that one would have thought come as part of the deal:

• GBP 2.50 (~USD 3.85) to drop-off a passenger in Bournemouth
• GBP 1.00 ~(USD 1.54) for a sealable plastic bag to place carry-on liquids and gels in Newcastle
• GBP 100 (~USD 154) plus tax at 20% for an annual security fast-track pass at Belfast (instead of just a competent service for all)

But what really takes the biscuit is Birmingham International (UK), requiring a pound coin to use a baggage trolley. In the arrivals baggage reclaim hall. When you have just stepped off an international flight and do not have any local coins. And the foreign exchange bureau only deals in notes. It is a fact of life that commerce will find a way but the last thing you need after a long and stressful flight with the kids is having to hand-carry your truckload of bags because you did not have the foresight to bring a British pound coin with you. We are happy to pay for things when we travel, but when every single interaction incurs a charge it gets tiresome very quickly.

2) Wifi

Wifi in airports is now an expectation and not a luxury, whether you use it to get on with work before that long flight or tweet your final photos of a great holiday before you head home. What is not so great is the measly free allowances a lot of airports provide or convoluted ways of actually getting online in the first place.

Skyscanner recently reviewed Europe's 50 busiest airports, and shamed those offering a paltry 15 or 20 minutes free wifi service, and even two airports where there was no free wifi service at all (for the record, they were Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen and Berlin Tegel).

Further afield there are pockets of Africa that offer good, free wifi services, but if you find yourself in Nigeria trapped in either Lagos Murtala Muhammed International Airport or Abuja Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport you will find yourself out of free wifi respectively within 20 minutes and Haha! Wifi! Good one! 

A curious arrangement is Beijing Capital International Airport, where you can get free wifi by entering your phone number and the service provider will text you an access code. But only if you have a Chinese mobile number. So anyone not a connected resident in the Middle Kingdom can go grab a seat and relax or indulge in some retail therapy. Yeah, about that...

3) Nothing to do after security

The time you choose to arrive at an airport could be a great thesis in combined game theory, chaos theory and risk aversion. What if you get there and the flight is empty, security is dead and you are unlucky enough to be travelling through somewhere like, Beijing? You have three choices:

1) shop for duty-free liquor, cigarettes or perfume as there is virtually nothing else of interest to buy there

2) try to grab a seat in one of the two tiny restaurants or chance your arm at being able to find somewhere to hang out near the Starbucks in the middle of the departure hall

3) hope that the flight in the gate next to yours is not full and people have not spilled over to your gate's waiting area as you literally have nowhere else to park yourself

This is not a phenomenon restricted to Asia. Ottawa Macdonald–Cartier International Airport in Canada similarly has nothing interesting to do either side of security, and our friend Abuja Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport also gets a special mention for having even less distractions (not a place you want a 10-hour wait in, trust me!).

So the flip side of your thesis is how late can you leave it to arrive at these airports with wonderfully unpredictable traffic and security check staffing policies, still make your flight and be left twiddling your thumbs for the least amount of time? Someone please write that! And in the meantime, airports please, if it is our money you are after we will gladly part with it for something of value.

4) Queues

Big Data and Analytics are everywhere these days so it is amazing that such a transparent operation as an airport cannot efficiently shuffle its staff around to minimise queues at key pinch points.

Airlines know how their flights are booked out, so know well in advance how many check-in desks they need to get everyone through efficiently. Similarly, security knows how many flights are due each day and their arrival patterns, so increasing the number of the open baggage scanners at the busiest times means everyone flows through nicely. Even immigration and passport control can ensure they have enough national/ foreign passport holder windows open when flights come in as the airline has the nationality of everyone onboard. So why are these chronic problems?

A recent trip through Charles de Gaulles in Paris was excruciating, with a queue of over 300 people waiting to pass immigration and only two passport control windows open. Then one of the immigration officers decided it was break time. Madness. Worse still was the total humiliation suffered by my wife and two other non-EU passport holders when returning to Aberdeen International Airport in the UK. They were made to wait until the entire plane had passed through immigration and then were shouted at for causing the airport staff an inconvenience as they were the only foreigners on the last flight of the day.

But credit where credit is due and proof that a speedy service through these perennial bottlenecks is possible. Copenhagen Airport has won awards for the best security for two years running and it is quite frankly embarrassing how fast the whole thing is. And best of all there are no drop-off fees, wifi is fast and free and there is plenty to do air-side (the terminal even has two Victoria's Secrets stores!). So I guess the moral of the story is to try to make Denmark part of your itinerary if you like things smooth and with plenty to do.

Do you regularly use any other airports that constantly drop the ball on key parts of the user experience? Is there anywhere you think handles things particularly well? Comments very welcome below!

Main header photo credit Jonathan Cohen, available from https://flic.kr/p/aDuZh6 

"Kiss and Fly" https://flic.kr/p/8sAmW7

"Wifi" https://flic.kr/p/oBz5ta 

"Nothing to do" https://flic.kr/p/obkFu4 

"Queues" https://flic.kr/p/fgLc4