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Aviation History
1964
1964 - 0121.PDF
84 RIGHT 'mernationol 16 January I New US airports—this is TWA's at New York ..•,•.- —-are arranged so that the aeroplanes are as near as possible to the terminal, and passengers can do as much for themselves as possible. Comments on the attention to cost-saving detail in the American airline industry is the subject of the article beginning on this page AIR COMMERCE . . . PROFITABILITY THROUGH PRODUCTIVITY FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE directed the Indian sanitarycommission from a bedroom in Mayfair, and from statistical data alone she reached vital conclusions about the health hazards facing the Army in India. Nevertheless, anyone who has not visited the airline industry's Mecca, the United States, must have some residual doubts about the validity of comparisons between that country and Britain. While travelling on a tight programme unconnected with aero- nautical matters, the opportunities for studying the industry are limited to personal experiences and to observations as a passenger. Yet this gives an opportunity to see the answer to a vital question: Why are British station staff costs so much higher than American, when the individuals are paid so much more in the United States ? The answer is "High staff productivity arising from a high level of managerial attention to detail." It is due to a myriad small simple improvements over the standard here, which must be described as managerially amateur and consequently wasteful of labour by comparison. In an industry where an unusually high proportion of expenditure, up to 40 per cent, is on pay and allowances, this is highly significant. A few examples illustrate the approach:— (1) Book-in positions arranged so that baggage deposited by the passengers rolls across the scales. A girl clerk does the whole job: no beefy porters are needed. (2) Flight documentation is done at the gate, usually within yards of the aircraft, eliminating document conveyors, squadrons of motorized supervisors, and tons of paper. At some major airports, a stewardess deplaned during transit-stops carries out the gate documentation. (3) Tickets are collected in flight by cabin staff (this is on normal services, not air shuttle; a passenger list is checked at the gate). (4) "Do it yourself" booking in by telephone at the check-in desk during slack periods. (5) Passengers are encouraged to carry baggage up to 21 in x 13in X 8in into the cabin, and larger pieces on aircraft equipped with special racks, such as American's Electras and Convairs. (6) The use of glass-fibre baggage bins, holding 15 to 20 pieces, to minimize handling at the aircraft. There are always a hundred and one reasons why "none of these ideas applies here." The vital principle, however, applies everywhere: it pays off to apply high grade managerial effort to the little prob- lems. This seems to be routine throughout most United States industry; but many British managers, unfamiliar with the techniques involved, perceive only the technical differences when they visit the country, and overlook the organizational aspect. Nearly all the conceivable economies in station staffing are achieved on the Air Shuttle services. On Sunday December 1, following the Thanksgiving holiday, it was planned that aircraft would leave La Guardia about every 20 minutes. The fleet of 39 aircraft allocated to the routes had to be increased to 46: over 20,000 passengers were carried. Yet there was only one traffic clerk, with occasional help from a supervisor, on duty at each of the two gates (for Boston and Washington). As each passenger was checked through, he deposited his baggage on a trolley which two loaders subsequently pushed a few yards to the aircraft. Ticketing was carried out in flight: the passengers themselves wrote their name and address on a boarding pass which was handed in at the gate. No reservations and few sales staff were needed, and thus the two largest items of indirect operating expense (traffic and sales) were cut to the very minimum. It is for this reason that the Shuttle is almost undoubtedly profit- able in an economic sense, though an orthodox accounting approach would have it stopped because revenues do not exceed the airlines' 86 per cent "average" overhead. The lessons for airport designers are that priority should be given to Function rather than to Fine Art—though this need not entail eyesores. The poor functional design of the three terminals at Heath- row is a major cause of low staff productivity. Though nominally the responsibility of the Ministers of Aviation and Works, etc, it might be constructive for the airlines to say to themselves "Whatever has happened is our own fault. We failed to define our needs closely enough, and we failed to put them across to the Ministry planners with sufficient force." A first principle is that the finger and gate layout does not achieve much until there are lounges, or at least waiting areas, at each gate, and the passengers are responsible for getting themselves there. When the nose of the aircraft is almost in the lounge, as it is in the American Airlines terminals at Idlewild and Los Angeles, for example, no shepherding whatever is needed. A door into the air- craft is opened and passengers board in three or four batches, divided up by pre-allocated seat numbers. Even where the passengers have to go into the open air briefly en route to the aircraft, no shep- herds (or shepherdesses) were seen at any airport. At Heathrow one of the biggest causes of aircraft lateness is that passengers get lost in the vast, overcrowded lounges, having ceased to listen to the myriad broadcasts that beat upon their ears. The language problem evaporates too. ; The two-level layout, separating arriving and departing passen- gers and their vehicles, is a straightforward way of doubling the vehicle access and processing areas, which is widely exploited. It also automatically prevents the head-on clash of two armies of people moving, by definition, in opposite directions. Most of those arriving want to get away from the airport as quickly as possible: many of the departing passengers will have some time to wait. Another design principle noted at New York and elsewhere is that of spreading the terminals out into a "linear perimeter" configuration, so that each company's aircraft are near the road network which feeds the passengers to them. Thus each airline's staff is concentrated into the minimum area, eliminating the huge distances that engineers and other staff travel at Heathrow, for example. An airport is a big place; aeroplanes are reasonably mobile; cars and buses can drive to any given spot; so why concen- trate everything into a tight little island like Heathrow Central? Perhaps London airport (North) should be resurrected and extended around the whole perimeter, which is the only place where there
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